Portugal's central bank tools prevent €6.5 million in fraud since 2024

Since May 2024, the Banco de Portugal (BdP) has introduced three consumer‑facing tools – beneficiary‑name confirmation, the SPIN instant‑payment initiation service and a beneficiary‑verification service – that allow customers to see the recipient’s name before authorising a transfer. The governor, Álvaro Santos Pereira, said these measures have avoided €6.5 million in fraudulent transactions over the first two years of operation.

The new safeguards helped cut manipulation‑of‑the‑payer fraud by 21 % in the first five months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. Fraud involving spoofed phone calls fell dramatically, with the share of such cases dropping from 60 % of fraudulent transfers in 2023 to 16 % in 2025. Overall fraud rates fell to four fraudulent direct debits, ten fraudulent transfers and 66 fraudulent card transactions per million operations.

Santos Pereira warned that the tools are ineffective against spoofing calls and called for Portugal to enact specific anti‑spoofing legislation – the only EU member still lacking such a law. He also announced a new digital‑fraud monitoring platform that links payment operators, telecoms, law‑enforcement and the judiciary.