Election warning: Zelle CEO says elderly Americans and their families need to be on ‘heightened state of alert’ against scams

“This is the topic in the world as we head toward early November,” says Fowler, who leads Early Warning Services, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company behind Zelle. “And you need to be working under the assumption that not everything that you read and get presented with is accurate.”

In 2021 the New York Times published a report on how some older Americans were tricked into making political donations during the last election, and this October CNN reported the practice has continued through to this election, with one survey finding that 50 elderly political donors were reportedly being scammed out of $6 million. The AARP says retirees who are victims of scams lose an average of $120,000, costing financial institutions $1 billion a year.

Even as Zelle’s co-owners JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and others are under investigation over concerns about how they screen bad actors on the app, Fowler has become an outspoken advocate for increased funding for law enforcement and a society-level response to scams of all sorts. “All I can say is: heightened state of alert for those who are targeted,” he says, “and for those loved ones of this population to keep an eye with them.”

Fowler declined to share Zelle’s actual numbers on reports of scams related to elections against elderly users. However, in May, as campaign season was heating up, Zelle marked the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day by launching a program with the National Council on Aging to educate older adults on how to avoid online scams.

That same month the AARP published a list of common election scams targetting it’s over-50 membership, including donation solicitations from fake political action committees. In October CNN published the results of its research into 1,000 reports filed with government agencies and consumer advocacy groups, finding that Republican fundraisers were the subject of 803 FTC complaints and Democrats the subject of 120 complaints.

In addition to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s probe into JP Morgan, the agency is also looking into whether other Zelle co-owners, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, are doing enough to prevent Zelle scams on the platform. Earlier this week, Bank of America reported that it was considering litigation against the CFPB, joining JPMorgan who had previously reported as much.

Extra friction to stop scams

Zelle, PayPal, Stripe, Square, and other payment processors add extra friction to their apps—steps that slow down the process—to encourage potential victims to think twice about who they’re sending money. “In the Zelle experience, if you are putting that political donation in, there will be a moment where the app says, ‘I don’t recognize this. Are you sure?’” says Fowler. “And there will even be certain places where there will be an additional call or step.”

The director of fraud victim support for AARP’s Fraud Watch Network, Amy Nofziger, says her team takes 500 calls a day from its over-50 members and others informing them of a variety of scams. Based on those calls, she says Cash App, Venmo and Zelle are the most commonly used by scammers.

“There is some confusion about some of these apps because oftentimes they are advertised through your bank,” says Nofziger. “You feel that they have the same consumer protections that you might with your bank, and they do not. We really recommend people only use these apps for friends, family, and people they know.” Making matters worse, some people don’t realized they’ve been scammed until weeks or months later, meaning the numbers could increase after the election.

Increasingly, payment processors are embracing a policy of education to help fight scammers, especially among elderly victims. Earlier this year, payment giant PayPal became the first P2P payment platform to join the AARP’s BankSafe program to educate retired Americans on how to identify scams. Stripe and Square also offer services for learning online fraud.

Beyond education and building software speed bumps, the payment platform’s chief fraud risk manager Ben Chance in August called for increased law-enforcement funding in a Fortune interview. “Whether it’s a puppy or a love interest or a thing that will never be delivered or a political scam,” says Fowler, “that’s where the energy on policy, law enforcement, and government engagement needs to happen.”

This article has been corrected to show that Bank of America and not Wells Fargo is considering litigation against the CFPB.

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