How authorised push payment fraud gets someone to send their own money

According to FraudSMART, the fraud awareness initiative led by the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland, losses from fraudulent payments and scams reached €179 million in 2025, up 27% from 2024.

The figures come from the Central Bank of Ireland. Authorised push payment fraud, known as APP fraud, now makes up 45% of total fraud by value, or €74.86 million. That is up from over 35% in 2024.

The step the scam depends on

APP fraud does not rely on breaking into an account. It relies on the account holder moving the money themselves. A scammer gains someone's trust, usually by appearing to come from a source the person already relies on, then persuades them to send a payment directly to an account the criminal controls.

This is why the fraud is so hard to stop once it starts. The bank sees a normal transfer, authorised by the customer, going to a normal-looking account. Nothing about the mechanics of the payment looks wrong. The deception happens earlier, in the conversation that convinces someone to press send.

Where it concentrates

Credit transfers, also called account-to-account payments, are where this plays out most. They accounted for about three quarters, 74.9%, of APP fraud in 2025. The value of APP fraud carried out through credit transfers almost doubled year on year, up 95%, to almost €53 million.

Mary D'Arcy, Financial Crime Lead at BPFI, points to how the approach reaches people in the first place: through online platforms, advertisements, social media, messaging services and phone calls. Fraudsters are increasingly using sophisticated social engineering tactics, including AI-enabled impersonation, to exploit trust and manipulate consumers into making payments themselves.

The tell

Because the deception happens before the payment, the moment to catch it is before the payment too. D'Arcy's advice centres on that gap: consumers should be especially cautious when asked to transfer money, share personal or financial information, or respond to unexpected communications, even where these appear to come from a trusted source. The appearance of trust is exactly what the fraud manufactures, so it cannot be the test for whether a request is genuine.

If a payment has already gone out and something feels wrong afterwards, the advice is to contact the bank immediately using the number on the back of a debit or credit card, and to report the incident to the Gardaí.