PayNow has announced that from 2024 onwards, users will no longer be able to use a nickname when transferring funds online due to a security measure.
Instead, customers will be able to stay anonymous via a new update that will allow them to mask certain letters of their account name.
According to The Straits Times (ST), PayNow will discontinue the service that allows users to opt for a nickname when transferring funds online.
Instead, customers will have the option of masking certain letters in their account name in its place.
The Association of Banks in Singapore is currently working with banks and other financial institutions to install the new feature.
In addition, they revealed that it would allow users to “pay their payees with confidence.”
This would mitigate the risk of payee impersonations without revealing the payee’s full name.
The option of using a nickname has been available on PayNow since its 2017 launch. It was to cater to those who wanted to keep their registered full name private when receiving an online transfer to their mobile number.
Currently, businesses using PayNow for their transactions are unable to use a nickname or change their registered account names.
ST reports that the removal of the nickname option comes after an emergence of recent cases whereby scammers, under the guise of legitimate companies, tricked victims into sending them funds via PayNow.
The victims had to scan doctored PayNow QR codes, which the offenders created using nicknames and mobile phone numbers.
As such, there would have been no need to key in a company’s unique entity number (UEN) when transferring the money.
One way to avoid these scams would have been typing in the UEN. However, few would be inclined to do so due to the troublesome nature of keying in the digits.
The Association of Banks in Singapore did not tell ST whether they stopped the nickname function due to such cases, a few of which the police are looking into.
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Featured image adapted from Qashier.
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