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Creating Friction
For years, the financial world has been trying to reduce friction for customers. Services such as Zelle, Venmo or FedNow mean customers don’t have to write a check, stuff it in an envelope and mail it. They don’t have to use a wire service to send money abroad. Instead, they can use stablecoin on the blockchain.
But at Bank Director’s Bank C-Suite Summit this week in Nashville, Tennessee, there was a palpable concern that customers are losing a growing amount to scams that capitalize on the speed of transactions. The data bears this out. The Federal Bureau of Investigation received more than 1 million cybercrime complaints last year involving more than $20 billion in losses, a 26% increase year-over-year, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report 2025. Many of those reports detailed phishing or spoofing, investment scams, data breaches, identity theft and business email compromise.
As the use of artificial intelligence accelerates, bank leaders are worried about the impact on crime. Bank Director’s 2026 Risk Survey revealed that bank executives and board members are concerned about increasingly sophisticated fraud and scams targeting customers (84%), followed by those targeting the organization and employees (77%).
One banking company in Austin, Texas, is trying to tackle this problem by creating friction, not reducing it. The $469 million Austin Capital Bank, a subsidiary of Greenback Fincorp, created a savings account called Fort Knox that can receive deposits but not send money. Customers give out a secure deposit number to the outside world that can’t be used to transfer funds from the account. Even if a fraudster obtains the secure deposit number, they still can’t move a single dollar, according to the bank. Also, the only place a customer can send money is to a checking account outside the bank, slowing down a scam by a few days. That time can be valuable.
Dave DeFazio, chief strategy officer for StrategyCorps, discussed the Fort Knox account on stage at the Bank C-Suite Summit. He said that in the future, the industry may move in this direction to improve security.
In my mind, popular tools such as Positive Pay, a longtime staple that verifies checks for commercial customers, should become more common. Customers need more options for security. Friction is one way to provide it.
• Naomi Snyder, editor-in-chief for Bank Director
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