Dealing with a fraudulent debit order

● Keep your bank statements safe and do not share your account details with anyone you don’t wish to do business with. This way you can prevent fraudulent debit orders from hitting your accounts in the first place, says Ulrich Janse van

Rensburg, the head of fraud strategy at the Absa Group.

Above all, stay informed of activity on your account. This way you can act as soon as you’ve identified suspicious activity. If you suspect debit order fraud, immediately contact your bank’s fraud hotline or use your banking app to reverse or stop transactions.

Once a suspicious debit order has been identified, you may dispute these transactions for the following reasons:

● You did not authorise the debit;

● The debit is in contravention of your mandate (to the user) – eg amount, date, duration is incorrect;

● You already instructed the user to cancel the mandate;

● You’ve cancelled the authorisation; or ● If there is a failure by the collector to adhere to the instruction to stop the collection, you can perform a stop payment either by going to your bank’s branch or via internet banking.

Janse van Rensburg cautions against disputing debit orders when you are short of cash as you can negatively affect your profile with the bank.