About the payment you are about to make
Your pause plan
- Stop the payment. Do not send anything while someone is waiting on the line.
- Hang up or stop replying. A genuine caller will not mind.
- Call your bank on the number printed on your card or in its own app. In the United Kingdom, call 159.
- Check with someone you trust: a family member, a friend or your trusted people. If the request claims to be family, ask for your family safe word.
- If money has already gone, call your bank straight away and follow the first-hour guide for your country.
What you choose stays on your phone
The questions are answered inside this page. The page’s security setting (a Content Security Policy, a rule the browser enforces) blocks it from connecting to any server after it has loaded, so your answers stay on your device. Nothing is saved: press Start again or close the tab and they are gone.
Why these ten questions
Most money lost to fraud is now sent by the person themselves, after being persuaded. In the Organization of American States’ 2026 report From Bank to Blockchain, Mercado Libre reports that 94.4% of confirmed fraud cases at its payment app, Mercado Pago, in Argentina from January to September 2025 were scams in which no system was broken into and the person was talked into moving the money. After the app began warning people at the moment of payment, in a few well-defined situations, those scams fell 48.6% on a year earlier (company figures).
The situations it warns about are the ones this check asks about: a first payment to someone new, a recipient already reported, an unusual amount, a sudden change in behaviour, and a payment begun during a phone call. Not every bank or app shows these warnings yet, so this page lets you ask the questions yourself.
Read more in The Digital Trust Deficit, UtilForge.org’s report on who carries the cost of online scams, section 6.
What this check cannot do
It cannot see the payment, the account or the person you are paying. A result with no warning signs does not prove a payment is safe. If anything feels wrong, pause and check with your bank on a number you find yourself.
For people who build apps and websites
Put the warning where the decision is made, show it only when a payment is out of pattern for that person, say one true thing in plain words, and let people name trusted contacts and set their own limits. The full list of eight points is in section 6 of the report.
Questions and answers
Someone from my bank is on the phone and says I must move my money to a safe account. What do I do?
Hang up. No bank asks you to move money to a safe account. Call your bank on the number printed on your card, from a different phone if you can.
Is a payment safe if the check finds no warning signs?
Not necessarily. The check helps you pause on the signs scams most often show. It cannot see who you are paying. If anything feels wrong, check with your bank or someone you trust.
Why does a phone call matter so much?
Because criminals guide people through a payment in real time, keeping them on the line so they cannot stop and check. Payment apps now treat a payment begun during a call as one of the strongest signs of a scam.
I have already sent the money. What now?
Call your bank straight away on the number printed on your card and ask it to try to recover the payment. Then report it; the first-hour guide shows where for your country.