The UK APP Scams Reimbursement Requirement makes sending and receiving firms responsible for reimbursing most in-scope authorised push-payment scam victims. Loss allocation sits alongside prevention and investigation, connecting scam handling with outcomes for affected customers.
TL;DR:
- Most qualifying APP scam claims require reimbursement under the applicable payment rules.
- Scope covers relevant Faster Payments and CHAPS arrangements with conditions, limits and exclusions.
- Sending and receiving firms share responsibility; ordinary commercial disputes can fall outside scope.
Summary
Protection when the customer authorised the transfer
Authorised push-payment scams involve a payer being deceived into authorising a transfer. The reimbursement framework addresses most qualifying victims within its scope, rather than only payments executed without the customer's consent. This distinction matters because the fact that a user approved a bank transfer does not by itself settle whether a scam-reimbursement claim falls within the applicable requirements.
Sending and receiving firms share responsibility
The framework allocates reimbursement responsibility between the sending and receiving payment firms, creating incentives across both sides of the transfer. Prevention, investigation and exchange of relevant information support the claim process. The firm interacting with the payer and the firm maintaining the recipient account therefore have different operational roles but both matter to the reimbursement and fraud-control arrangement.
Scope, exceptions and the payment system
The requirements concern in-scope APP fraud over the relevant Faster Payments and CHAPS arrangements. Claim eligibility, applicable caps and exclusions are important; the framework does not convert every disputed purchase or transfer into an automatically reimbursable scam. The distinction between a civil dispute, an unauthorised transaction and an APP scam should remain clear when describing the consumer outcome and the institution handling it. Not every payment loss is an APP scam.
Policy guidance and the definitive instruments
PSR's PS25/5 consolidates previous reimbursement publications and explains the framework, including CHAPS requirements and frequently raised questions. It expressly describes itself as general guidance and points to the legal instruments for definitive requirements. A particular claim should therefore be assessed against those instruments and the applicable version, rather than treating a short overview as a complete account of every deadline, exception or evidential standard.
Keywords
- UK APP
- scam reimbursement
- Faster Payments
- CHAPS
- sending firms
- receiving providers
- eligibility conditions
- claim limits
- consumer standards
- fraud investigation