Across the world, billions of dollars are now lost to online payment fraud every year, much of it perpetrated by international organised crime, according to experts, and most of it initiated by WhatsApps, Facebook ads, texts and other digital triggers. A global hotspot is the UK, where new rules from the Payment Systems Regulator come into force next month obliging banks to compensate scammed customers in many circumstances — something that the largest lenders already do under a voluntary scheme. Of the £1.2bn stolen in the UK in 3mn fraud cases last year, about 40 per cent were the result of this kind of “authorised push payment” scam, according to bank lobby group UK Finance. And more than 60 per cent of those losses were reimbursed.Click here to read the full article