Issues ›
APP scam refund refused
Customer tricked into authorising a payment to a fraudster; the firm declined or reduced reimbursement.
18,906banking decisions on this issue
25.5%upheld where an outcome is recorded
40firms with 20+ decisions here
Rules the ombudsman applied
Derived from the rules actually cited in these decisions, ranked by how often they appear — not from an editorial view of which rules matter.
CRM Code (APP scam reimbursement) · cited in 6,355
Voluntary code on reimbursing victims of authorised push payment scams, superseded for in-scope payments by the PSR requirement.
Payment Services Regulations 2017 · cited in 6,274
Governs how payment firms must handle authorised and unauthorised payments, including liability for unauthorised transactions.
FCA Consumer Duty (PRIN 2A) · cited in 912
Requires firms to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.
FCA DISP (Dispute Resolution) · cited in 763
How firms must handle complaints and how the Ombudsman decides them.
Consumer Credit Act 1974 · cited in 511
Consumer credit rights, including Section 75 joint liability for card purchases.
PSR APP reimbursement requirement · cited in 238
From 7 October 2024, in-scope APP scam victims must be reimbursed by default.
Which firms lose on this
Firms with fewer than 20 decisions on this issue are excluded — the rate would not mean anything.
In the ombudsman’s words
Mr E complains that Nationwide Building Society refuses to give him a refund.
Mrs L complains that National Westminster Bank Plc didn’t do enough to assist her when she was a victim of fraud.
Mrs W complains that Lloyds Bank plc will not refund to her the money that was taken from her account as a result of a scam.
Mrs C is seeking to recover a total of £25,000 from TSB Bank plc (“TSB”), after she was the victim of a scam.
Quotes are shown only where the exact wording was verified against the decision text.
The US counterpart
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) runs a separate complaint database for American consumers. We map its issue labels onto this issue ourselves — the CFPB does not — and the two datasets are not comparable: UK figures above are ombudsman decisions with an adjudicated outcome, while these are complaints made to a US regulator, most of which are never adjudicated. A count of one is not a count of the other, so no rate, percentage or ratio is calculated between them.
The CFPB recorded 14,667 complaints mapped to this issue, received between February 2024 and October 2026, across all US consumer financial products.
Most common CFPB issue labels within this mapping:
Fraud or scam — 14,667 complaints
Source: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, not scoped to banking — the CFPB’s complaint categories span all consumer financial products, not just banking.