Banks slow intrabank transfers to help spot fraud

According to Gartner, four UK banks have slowed intrabank transfers to try to reduce fraud.

"The willingness of these four banks to slow down internal transfers shows that they take this threat seriously," said Litan and Pescatore. "It also shows that current back-end security systems are inadequate to handle the phishing threat, and that banks may be resorting to manual examination of some transactions."

Ouch, "manual examination". That's gotta hurt.

Banks that don't take strong measures against phishing risk losing customers' trust, the analyst pair said, which could translate into higher costs if banks are forced to return to more expensive mail and telephone for support and transactions.

Costs have already increased and growth in consumer usage and adoption has slowed. While I'm sure that consumers will trade features (in this case the benefit of speedy transfers) for security, I think the banks that can increase security without overly reducing features will be the winners.