NAB has successfully intercepted and reclaimed more than $48 million from suspected scams over a six-month period, spanning October 2024 to March 2025. The bank's efforts equate to nearly $2 million per week being safeguarded from potential fraud.
The financial institution has implemented various measures to combat the increasing threat of scams targeting Australians. These include payment alerts within the NAB app and Internet Banking, removing links from text messages, and blocking payments to certain high-risk cryptocurrency exchanges.
Chris Sheehan, NAB Executive of Group Investigations and former Australian Federal Police executive, emphasized the evolving nature of criminal tactics and the challenges posed by artificial intelligence in distinguishing legitimate transactions from fraudulent ones. "That’s why we need to be proactive and prevent scams, rather than reacting after they’ve happened," Mr. Sheehan stated.
He further reported that "we stopped and recovered more than $48m of customers’ money from being sent to scammers between October 2024 and March 2025." In addition to this recovery, customers abandoned over $195 million worth of payments during the same period after receiving real-time alerts.
These alerts are designed to help users identify potential scams at the moment they initiate digital payments. They target various scam types including invoice, investment, romance, and goods and services frauds. Customers receive an alert if a transaction appears unusual or raises concerns about potential scams.
NAB's recent campaign focuses on educating customers about common scam red flags on social media platforms, websites, and apps where such activities often originate. This initiative is part of a larger brand effort highlighting NAB Secure—an enterprise-wide commitment aimed at protecting customers through education, technology, and real-time support.
Mr. Sheehan stressed the importance for Australians to recognize key warning signs like unexpected contact or pressure to act quickly as organized criminals continuously devise new methods to deceive individuals. "These grubs are also experts in socially engineering people to make the payment themselves," he said.
In defining their strategies: stopping a payment involves preventing it before leaving NAB’s control; recovering entails retrieving funds after they have left NAB’s domain; abandoning refers to customers choosing not to proceed with a payment upon further inquiry or review.
For ongoing updates on scams and fraud prevention advice, NAB directs customers to its Security Hub.