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Payment Apps - TPR's In Focus - Oct. 6, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from Troy University's Trojan Cafe,
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  offering handcrafted Starbucks beverages and a wide assortment of meal
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  and snack options, located on Troy University's Montgomery
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  campus across from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus,
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  and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson. Payment apps are convenient
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  for consumers, but scammers have found ways
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  to steal the money. Amanda Senn, Director of the
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  Alabama Securities Commission, visits The Exchange to
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  tell us how they operate and the red flags to look
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  for. Amanda,
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  welcome back to Troy Public Radio. Thank you,
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  Carolyn. Always glad to be here. Well, it's always great to have
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  you on The Exchange. So what are your concerns today
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  to share with the listeners? Well, Carolyn, we have received an influx
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  of complaints. One of them involves a payment app
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  and the other one involves electronic invitations.
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  Yeah, these payment app ads are really pushing the convenience
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  of using them. Payment apps can be convenient. It's like having your
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  wallet built into your cell phone. Some of them are
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  in the form of mobile apps. Sometimes you can log into websites. You're familiar
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  with them: Venmo, Cash App, PayPal,
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  Apple. They all offer payment services. And for people
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  who don't carry around a lot of cash, when you owe a friend
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  for grabbing your coffee or splitting
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  costs associated with a shower or a party, it's easy
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  just to use one of these payment apps to provide
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  the reimbursement rather than going to an ATM
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  and pulling out cash or writing a check. So they can be convenient, but they
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  also, like with any form of payment carry
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  some risk. So what are the vulnerabilities?
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  Well, for some of these payment platforms, as with any
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  technology, fraudsters have been exploiting them.
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  Some of our complaints have involved fake payment
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  requests, fake pop-up support messages that
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  come in— or say pop-up if you're online on your computer,
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  via text message if you're on your phone. Some of
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  them have reported that they have received as a
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  user of an app a notification from a user
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  that looks like someone they should know or perhaps has a name
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  very similar to someone they know, and it is asking you to
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  accept a request for a transfer or to initiate
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  a payment. So hackers have been able to manipulate information that
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  seems similar to regular and routine payments. Some have
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  reported impersonation, when somebody impersonates
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  someone you know, or a criminal impersonates someone you know, maybe resembling
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  a friend. And then fake purchase situations.
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  These fraudsters may claim that you've made a purchase. For example,
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  in PayPal, if you thought you were purchasing a new
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  kayak paddle and you wanted to pay for
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  PayPal, since several websites allow you to do that, It might show up in
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  your purchases and you think, well, I never purchased a paddle. But sometimes
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  people in a hurry, and friends have reported, they don't remember those
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  late-night purchases they made. So some of our
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  reports have come in and identified purchases that they didn't actually make
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  or requests for purchases. And these are just fraudsters trying to get access to your
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  hard-earned dollars. So Amanda, when it dawns on a person
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  that, no, I didn't do this, Is it too late to get the
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  money back? Sometimes it is. It depends on how quickly you
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  contact authorities after initiating the payment.
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  So hopefully you'll have recognized a suspicious request
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  or activity. But if you have already clicked on a link or
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  authorized a payment, you can contact the platform.
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  I would contact them immediately because sometimes there are holds or delays
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  in those transactions and they don't clear. So there's some time. Cancel or
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  withdraw. In some cases, the financial service provider
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  will be able to recall the money beyond that window,
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  and it depends on how the hacker or the cybercriminal accessed
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  the platform. Sometimes it's not always the consumer's fault.
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  In other words, they're not the ones that accidentally clicked on it, but it may
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  be a problem with the financial service provider's platform,
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  and they may reimburse you if it's something that they should have been responsible for.
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  But most of the time these things happen because of a consumer
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  or user error. And again, there's a possibility
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  you can restore the funds to your account or recall information.
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  But in many of our cases, the money is gone and it's too late to
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  retrieve the funds. You have to be vigilant. It's like the clock
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  is ticking. What are some red flags so that you don't
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  do this? Always check for suspicious requests.
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  Or activity. If you open your Venmo account or PayPal
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  account and see a request for payment or a fund retrieval,
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  whether it's somebody sending you a request or you initiating one,
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  always be sure that you know the recipient. And if the request is coming to
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  you, you can pick up the phone and call your friend or family member and
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  ask directly, say, hey, did you send me that payment request?
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  And just verify their username because they don't always match.
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  Some fraudsters will use a play on someone's name or
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  their email address, so just confirm that that's the actual sender.
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  You want to make sure again the username matches the person.
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  Is someone pressuring you to act immediately? If there is a payment
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  request sitting out there, are you also receiving a text message about it?
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  That would be unusual. Or is the request coming
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  in from an email, which would be unusual? If they are
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  asking you to provide a separate release or
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  a verification, these are all activities that are not typically
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  conducted in a payment app. So there would be things that
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  are a little out of the ordinary, except fraudsters are getting so sophisticated
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  with new tools. I would encourage everyone, if they're not expecting it,
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  or even if they are, pick up the phone to verify, especially if it's peer-to-peer
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  and not through a business. So speaking about electronics,
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  what about the electronic forms of invitations?
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  Should we be aware of some problems there?
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  Yes, Carolyn, this is the first we've seen of these electronic
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  or evite scams. I received one in my inbox
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  and it was from a person who was a friend and I recognized the
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  name and it appeared to be from this person's legitimate email address,
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  but upon further inspection, I realized that it
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  was a fraudulent, malicious phishing email that
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  had come through. Some companies have already put warnings out on their website.
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  Evite did, and some of the others have begun taking
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  down the images. For example, when I went back through
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  my email to review it 2 weeks later— I didn't open it though— I noticed
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  that it had— the company had replaced the fraudulent
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  attachment with a warning sign. So they must have internally fixed
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  the problem with that platform, but right now
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  exercise caution when receiving eVites because we've seen
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  several reports come in about these fraudulent emails recently, and we wouldn't want
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  anybody to click on a malicious link and open a virus on
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  their phone or computer. You have told us before
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  that when you're getting a communication, hover your mouse
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  over that person or entity and
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  see if it's really who you think it is. If you're
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  operating on your computer, you can right-click on the email address
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  and expand it, hover over URLs to expand them,
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  and there are certain properties you can view. It's much easier on your computer.
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  On your cell phone, you can do that as well. It's a little more tricky,
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  but check your emails on your computer and you can expand those
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  fields to see very clearly whether it's from an email address that you recognize
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  or a fraudster fabricating an email just to trick
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  you into clicking on it. So finally, Amanda, can your listeners go
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  to the Alabama Securities Commission website and
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  learn more about these tricks? Yes,
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  Carolyn, we have a scam alert on our homepage and it's
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  asc.alabama.gov, or you can type in just Alabama Securities
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  Commission and it'll pull up our website. You can click on the scam
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  alert link and we include all the information about the scams that
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  we're seeing and new scams. Thank you for the alerts to your
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  listeners so that they won't become victims of the latest
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  scam. Thank you always for promoting awareness of these scams.
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  We want to keep our Alabama dollars in state. And thanks to
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  the ASC for helping us do that. That's right. We're always here
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  for our public. Joining us on The Exchange was Amanda Senn,
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  Director of the Alabama Securities Commission.
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  More information about scams related to payment apps can be
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  found at the asc.alabama.gov website,
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  and the ASC phone number is 1-800-222-1253.
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  Thanks for joining us today for In Focus, which is
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  a podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and feel
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  free to get in touch at infocus@troy.edu.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported Troy
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  Public Radio.