Alternatively, just make a bank transfer of a couple of hundred pounds to your savings account and your bankâs fraud prevention service will contact you 
Interesting that Starling is a member. Is Monzo going to join?
I donât think having a number to contact will change much will it?
People know they can google for a number or itâs on their card if they want to talk to their own bank. The problem isnât contacting your bank, itâs realising that itâs not your bank contacting you to start with.
Particularly older people, so many donât know how to contact their banks.
At work I literally have a document with various bankâs fraud departments to give out to people because they honestly donât know it, and when they Google numbers there are so many to choose from.
I think a National number is a good idea. I personally can find a fraud number for my bank but the reality is thatâs not how a lot of people, particularly those who are vulnerable, work - and they are the main victims.
It canât hurt to have three digits National number to call regardless of your bank, whether you move banks or not.
Glad to see most banks taking part:
"Banks that are taking part include Barclays, Lloyds (including Halifax and Bank of Scotland), NatWest (including Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank), Santander and Starling Bank.
Nationwide Building Society said it would join but it also launched its own version on Monday."
Iâm not sure how successful this will be but hopefully, it helps some people. An easy number to remember might be better than all the numbers that exist at the moment.
Sounds like you should have set this up and then all banks would have been included.
Well mine is just a Word document that I periodically check but Iâm not being paid to do that!
But it really opened my eyes to just how many people are scammed on a daily basis, and almost all who I speak to are vulnerable through age, socio-economic situations, disabilities, mental health issues etc. Often they are panicked and havenât even tried to contact their banks - they just call us.
If 159 was a known number, national and involved any and all banks as standard I canât see how it can be a negative thing. Presumably all a bank would need to do is provide the 159 service with their fraud number to connect callers to.
People can also just be kept off guard despite knowing all the tactics that criminals use. On one of the BBC programmes, one of the victims of fraud worked for a bank and knew all of the criminals tricks, yet still fell for it. Thankfully, she realised very quickly and did everything else right, but everyone can be a victim, no matter how much you think you know the tricks.
A number like this should also make it easier to quickly contact your bank as you donât have to do frantic Google searches to make sure you have the right fraud number.
It would be ideal if it put the number in the transfer process, generally the piece that says are you sure you know this person or similar, and it says if youâre unsure, or if this was a random call asking you to move money to a safe account etc, please call ### to verify.
That would probably prevent a lot more fraud.
something almost caught me not so long ago. It was a text from a bank that said âhere is your security code for your payment to ASDA, if this wasnât you phone [number]â. I definitely went through a few moments of âoh fuck someone is using my HSBC account againâ before realising the phone number was spoopy. It doesnât take much.
As the phone networks have to enable it, perhaps it knows what the last âbankâ that called you was and calls them back on their proper number?
I think a simple âpress 1 to speak to NatWest, press 2 to speak to LloydsâŚâ etc would be more reliable than an automated system thatâll one way or the other have to try to work out which bank you need to be put through to, since I donât see how it could effectively do this for those with multiple accounts.
Thatâs how I thought it would be, but what happens when thereâs more than 9 participating banks?
They could use voice recognition perhaps? âPlease state the name of your bank after the toneâŚâ
I hate those things.
âPlease state your bankâ
âNationwideâ
âTransferring you to Natwestâ
âDid you say Lloydsâ
âNo Barclaysâ
âDid you say HSBCâ
âNo Barclaysâ
âDid you say NatWestâ
Haha yes they do tend to be absolute garbage. My favourite is the âmy voice is my passwordâ thing with one of the government departments that Iâve had to use before. The system just gave up when I was trying to set it up and hung up on me in the end 
I did this thing on my phone, opened up the dialer, typed 159 then pressed call.
Anyways itâs push 1 for this, 2 for thatâŚ
I used my 3 to record one in a happy voice, one in a bored voice and one in a very annoyed voice. Covered all eventualities