There are several different services and apps to be able to transfer money to other private individuals via mobile. In Sweden, the dominant service is Swish, which was launched in 2012.
Today, the service is used by both private individuals, companies and organisations. In total, Swish is used by 8.5 million private users and 325,000 companies.
But recently fraudsters who want to cheat money have also started using the app.
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Fraudsters use fake Swish app
Fraud has become increasingly common and the number of reported fraud crimes increased in 2023 by as much as 22 percent compared to the year before.
In several places in the country, a new fraud trend has been noticed where the fraudster uses a fake Swish app. The app looks identical to the original but it lacks the feature of making real transactions.
This means that the app is used to make fake payments and the scams have so far mainly targeted restaurants.
— It is enough to know that it is a new trend. In these cases, we are talking about thousands of dollars each time. We can assume that more people have been cheated of smaller amounts, say the municipal police Ghadi Ghazale to Halland’s News.
The number of frauds has increased significantly. Photo: Caisa Rasmussen / TT
READ MORE: The new trend: Payment with fake Swish app
Swish issues a new warning
Now Swish has issued a new warning on its website to protect its users against fraudsters. When visitors enter the website, they are greeted by the following text:
“Swish never contacts private users via phone, email or SMS. If you have been contacted by someone claiming to be from Swish, do not answer the SMS/email or continue the conversation. Then contact the police,” they write on the website.
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Have you seen the prompt in the app?
They also have a warning in the app for some time now. There, the user is met with the text “Swish not at someone else’s request”.
If you click on the information box, a text will appear explaining that it has become increasingly common for fraudsters to cheat money by using scam text messages and scam calls. They therefore recommend that one should not swipe at someone else’s request.
Photo: PrivatInformation about fraud. Photo: Private
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