To ensure the safety and security of your account, AWA Alliance Bank will require Members to have SMS One Time Password functionality activated in order to use internet banking. Additionally Members are required to update their internet banking passwords to a minimum of 8 characters including a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. To find out more click here.

Seven things that your bank will never ask you – but a scammer will

Scammers purporting to be from your bank can be convincing, but there are some of the things your bank will never ask you.

Their tricks normally involve pretending to be your bank, whether on the phone or via email.  After convincing you that they are genuine, they ask you to carry out various plausible-sounding actions that will result in your account being hacked. 

1. Call or email to ask you for your pin or any online banking passwords

If your bank does contact you, perhaps to check that a transaction was really made by you, it would not ask for your pin to confirm your identity, and would never ask for online passwords.

2. Send someone to your home to collect cash, bank cards or anything else

Having posed on the telephone as a bank employee to extract key information such as your pin, the criminals may say they are sending an official courier to your home to collect the corresponding card. These couriers will have bogus “official” identification.

3. Ask you to authorise the transfer of funds to a new account or hand over cash

Often criminals, posing as a bank, will instruct you that your account is under threat, usually from a “corrupt employee” or “cyber criminals”. You will be instructed to make an online transfer of money into a new “safe account” – actually the scammers – or hand cash to a bogus employee.

4. Ask you to carry out a ‘test transaction’ online

Criminals pretending to be from a bank sometimes email customers asking them to perform a “test” transaction online, perhaps because of a “technical problem” on their account.

5. Send an email with a link to a website that asks you to enter your online banking details

This is the well-known “phishing” scam. 

6. Ask you to email or text personal or banking information

Even if the email address appears to belong to the bank.

7. Provide banking services through any mobile apps other than the bank’s official apps

To download your bank’s mobile banking app, follow the link from its official website.

AWA Alliance Bank