ANZ to roll out ‘kill switch’ technology to protect customers

It’s the latest weapon one bank hopes will protect Aussies from being ripped off.

Customers at one of Australia’s big four banks will be the first to get access to a “kill switch” allowing them to instantly lockdown their accounts.

ANZ Bank will roll out the Digital Padlock technology from mid-year to customers using their ANZ App, ANZ Plus and Internet Banking services.

Once activated, it will block debit and credit cards, as well as disable digital access and stop unauthorised activity on their accounts, but still allowing direct debits and loan repayments to go through. The tool will also notify the ANZ fraud monitoring system Falcon of any suspicious activity.

“Cyber criminals are constantly finding new ways to target Australians. The more tools customers have at their fingertips to protect their money, the better,” ANZ Group Executive Australia Retail, Maile Carnegie, said.

Maile Carnegie said ANZ's new Digital Padlock will give customers "peace of mind". Picture: Supplied

It comes as the ANZ revealed it had stopped more than $140 million being sent to criminals in 2024 alone.

Customers can already temporarily block their cards within the ANZ App, which was done 744,000 times last year, but Ms Carnegie said the new feature “will build on this capability”.

“ANZ Digital Padlock takes just a few clicks so it will give our customers direct, real-time control over the security of their own accounts,” she said.

“It will provide some extra peace of mind for customers, knowing that they can act quickly if they think they are at risk of being compromised and protect them from common scams currently targeting Australians, including phishing and impersonation scams.”

Once the threat is deemed over, banking staff can restore full access to accounts.

The technology is widely used in Singapore after banks were mandated to provide a “kill switch” two years ago.

ANZ Bank will roll out the Digital Padlock technology from mid-year. Picture: NewsWire/Gaye Gerard

Ms Carnegie said their experts are constantly working to be a step ahead of fraudsters.

“We all try very hard to maintain a high degree of paranoia about the whole thing so that we keep coming up with ideas like Padlock, because there’s no suggestion that we’re at the end of this fight,” she said.

“Scams are incredibly insidious and we’re always looking for ways to try and give our customers more confidence and a greater sense of control,” she told news.com.au.

Earlier this year, news.com.au launched People Before Profit after it was revealed scammers stole $2.7 billion from Aussies in one year alone and victims and advocates argued the Federal Government’s Scam Prevention Framework did not go far enough to protect victims.

More than 20,000 Aussies signed a petition calling on the Federal Government to make it mandatory for banks to compensate scam victims – just like in the UK.

In October 2024, world-leading legislation was introduced in the UK making compensation mandatory for scam victims within five business days, except in cases of gross negligence.

ANZ scam expert Ruth Talalla believes the Digital Padlock will serve as an effective early intervention system for customers in the midst of a scam, and will constantly evolve to combat scammers as they attempt to find different ways to steal from vulnerable customers.

“We work very closely with the other teams within customer protection,” Ms Talalla told news.com.au.

“We constantly speak to customers to find out how (a particular scam) happened. There are often variations of old scams, or just new and sophisticated ways of doing the same scam.

“We can then feed that information back to our Falcon team, who can then look at how they can adjust the rules to close any sort of gap that the scammer has slipped through or is exploiting,” Ms Talalla said.

“We’re fighting it from all sides. On one, we’re trying to make sure that we’re identifying those transactions that might look a bit sus, and also enabling customers to know what to look out for.”

ANZ has also announced it has created a new permanent “ANZ First Responders” team to help customers who have been victims of fraud or scams.

“This team of specialists are experts in supporting our customers who suspect they’ve fallen victim to a fraud or scam,” Ms Carnegie said.

The 65-strong team will join its existing Scams Assist teams, as well as offer in-branch support.

Originally published as ANZ to roll out ‘kill switch’ technology to protect customers