“PayPal combines technology expertise with enhanced manual investigatory work to help detect and stop these bad actors, as well as partners and collaborates with law enforcement to help prevent customer and platform exploitation. “We’ve always made preventing bad actors from using our platform a top company priority,” said a statement from PayPal and Venmo. The companies said they are unwavering in their commitment to protect consumers and are constantly improving their services. “Somehow an individual was able to hack into my CashApp account which was linked to my bank account and fraudulently transfer $450 to themselves, also disable my phone notification so that I was unaware,” said one user, illustrating how easy it is for scammers to access usernames and phone numbers to take over accounts. A user scans a QR code on a smartphone, transferring bitcoins into a digital wallet in British Columbia. Three companies - PayPal (which also owns Venmo), Square11 (which owns Cash App) and Coinbase, popular for cryptocurrencies - accounted for more than two-thirds of all digital wallet complaints. The three most common complaints are problems managing, opening or closing accounts problems with fraud or scams and problems with transactions, including unauthorized activity, CALPIRG found. Nearly 7,000 of them have come since March 13, 2020, when the pandemic bore down. Since the CFPB started collecting complaints in the “mobile or digital wallet” category in 2018, there have been more than 10,000 complaints logged, according to its database through June. That surge is reflected in complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The pandemic has been good for mobile pay apps, as locked-down consumers bought essentials online and paid with “contactless” transactions. “People use these P2P apps for convenience - but there’s nothing convenient about not being able to access your money.” “We really think it’s time for the CFPB to force these payment apps to provide better protection and customer service,” said Jenn Engstrom, state director of the CALPIRG Education Fund. That’s an existing duty that’s not being enforced, CALPIRG said. President Joe Biden had troubles of his own: It took only minutes for BuzzFeed News to find the president’s secret account, “revealing a network of his private social connections, a national security issue for the United States, and a major privacy concern for everyone who uses the popular peer-to-peer payments app,” BuzzFeed reported.ĬALPIRG wants policymakers to do two things: Ensure that consumers are protected when they’re defrauded into sending money, and require app providers to investigate errors and fraud, even when the consumer made the mistake or sent the money. “I still had to pay my friend back, so I was just out $100,” Nourishad told CALPIRG. She asked Venmo to intervene, but got no response. Her money sped off to someone else, who never responded to entreaties to return it. She tried to repay a friend $100 for a series of ride-shares via Venmo, but she mistyped a letter in her friend’s username. But CALPIRG said it needs to live up to the ideals of its mission and do more to protect consumers from woes plaguing the digital wallet sphere.Ĭonsider the plight of Tiara Nourishad, a student at UC San Diego. The CFPB was created in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-08 to protect the little guy from the machinations of big banks and Wall Street, and the agency has endured partisan warfare ever since. In the absence of regulatory action, customer service improvements or security features appear to ratchet up only in response to reputational threats,” its report said. Customer service for payment apps is minimal, sometimes lacking contact phone numbers or human interaction at all. “Digital app payments are generally ‘instantaneous’ and the app companies generally take the position that transactions are not reversible. However, the ease of opening peer-to-peer (P2P) accounts, the ease of obtaining information about other users and a variety of ways to trick consumers have created new fraud risks to users,” said an analysis of mobile wallet complaints by the California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. “The apps were originally marketed as a way for friends to split expenses. About four of every five American consumers use a mobile payment app, and hundreds of bereft Californians - and thousands of others around the nation - have pleaded for official intervention to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since 2018, with an enormous spike in complaints during the pandemic.
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