JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are refusing to reimburse the vast majority of customers who send their money to scammers, according to a new report.
New numbers from the US Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations show Chase reimbursed 2% of scams reported on the instant payments network Zelle in 2023.
That compares to 4% at Wells Fargo and 24% at Bank of America.
According to US banking laws, scams occur when a customer is deceived into authorizing an unauthorized payment.
This is separate from fraud, which happens when the customer does not consent and an illicit transaction is unauthorized.
So how often are the banks reimbursing customers hit with fraudulent transactions?
Although it’s not releasing exact numbers, the subcommittee says the overall percentage of fraud claims that were reimbursed by the three banks dropped from 50% in 2022 to 38% in 2023.
Melissa Felcher, Managing Director and Head of Commerce Enablement at JPMorgan Chase, says the bank believes the main focus should be on stopping criminals and on new legislation for reimbursements.
“We take our responsibility to investigate every single claim incredibly seriously and we’re always ensuring that the quality of those decisions is high…
Changing the laws to require reimbursement of authorized transactions will not actually solve the problem, which is the criminal behavior.”
According to the subcommittee’s report, customers of the three banking giants reported over $372 million in transactions as scams and fraud on Zelle in 2023 alone.
About three-quarters of those claimed losses, totaling $270 million, were not reimbursed by the banks.
Zelle says it processed $803 billion in transactions in 2023, and 99.9% of those transactions completed without any report of fraud or scam.
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