High street bank Barclays is to give its customers more control over their debit cards in an effort to crackdown on fraud, Sky reports.
New features set to be rolled out will allow consumers to introduce controls including remotely lowering their withdrawal limits at ATMs and turning off allowances for online purchases, to help limit losses if card details are stolen.
Research from the bank shows that millennials are most at risk of online fraud, particularly those living in scam “hotspots” such as London, Bristol and Birmingham.
The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics suggest that fraud and cyber offenses could now account for almost half of all recorded crime in the UK, at a cost of £11bn.
Men are reportedly hit by fraud more often than women, and nearly a fifth of people who find themselves the victims of scams take no action to boost their digital defences.
The new debit card features will allow Barclays customers to instantly turn on and off their card’s capacity to make online and remote purchases, as well as raise and lower their daily withdrawal limits.
The bank is also investing £10m into a national advertising campaign to encourage people to take precautions against banking fraud.
Ashok Vaswani, chief executive of Barclays UK, said: “Fraud is often wrongly described as an invisible crime, but the effects are no less damaging to people’s lives.
“As a society our confidence in using digital technology to shop, pay our bills and connect with others has grown faster than our knowledge of how to do so safely.
“I believe the need to fight fraud has now become a national resilience issue, and we all need to boost our digital safety levels in order to close the gap.
“That is why we are launching this new national campaign on digital safety, and we will do all in our power to arm people with the tools and information they need.”