A few weeks ago, as I was about to leave my office for the day, my cellphone started to beep as several SMS notifications came through confirming online credit card transactions, including a R7 700 booking through an online travel agent. None of these were my transactions.

I immediately called the Absa card division who administer the credit card to report the fraud and stop the card. While I was making the call my cellphone rang – it was the fraud division who had already flagged my transaction as suspicious and had reversed it.

Clearly some internal mechanism must have been triggered, and I have to admit I was pretty impressed. I receive many complaints about banks not dealing effectively with fraud claims, but here the bank had flagged and reversed the transaction before I had even made the call.

So I asked Paul Mathias, Group Head of Fraud Risk Management at Barclays Africa what systems they have in place that can identify irregular transactions. Unfortunately he did not want to give away too much information about what algorithms they use, because that would help fraudsters work out how to circumvent them, but he did tell me that once one of their controls alerts them to a potential fraud or where a customer advises them of a suspicious transaction, their operational staff review the suspicious incident and act swiftly to ensure that losses are prevented, or curtailed where an initial loss has already occurred, and that every effort is made to recover any stolen funds.   “In certain cases we contact the customer to assist us in determining whether a transaction was fraudulent or not,” says Mathias.

The case is then handed over to their investigation team.  This team of forensic and cyber forensic investigators work closely with law enforcement to identify syndicates responsible for fraud.  “These investigations often include the other banks in the industry, and these joint operations have met with a great deal of success over the years. Some fraud types require extensive investigation before a case can be handed over to law enforcement for them to pursue the matter to arrest and conviction stage,” says Mathias.

While the investigation into my case is still continuing, I am convinced that my card was compromised when I had stayed at a hotel earlier that week. Although it had been an online booking the receptionist insisted on taking a carbon copy of my card for hotel “extras”. I was suspicious at the time but I didn’t argue – next time I won’t be so accommodating.

As mine was a clear-cut case, and conducted online, the transactions were immediately cancelled and I suffered no actual losses, but unfortunately this is not always the case, especially if a cloned card is used. In that case the bank has to find out if the customer willfully or negligently divulged their personal details such as their password or pin – this takes a lot longer, and the money cannot be reversed until then.

The best way to protect your money is to remain vigilant and keep a lookout for suspicious activity, for instance someone offering assistance at an ATM or a shop assistant who tries to remove a card from your direct line of sight.  When using a cash machine be wary for signs that it may have been tampered with.  If you shop online ensure you use online stores which use secure payment solutions.

And make sure you are signed up for the SMS notification service. Mathias says with the increase in sim swap fraud, he has had instances where customers have reported alerts received from their mobile phone company advising them that their sim card had been replaced which they were unaware of.  “By reporting this, and doing so as soon as possible after an incident, we were able to protect them from falling victim to online banking fraud.”