Fraud, Scam & Authorised Payment Reimbursement Policy — Australia

Purpose and scope

This Policy explains how ARMF approaches fraud and scams affecting Australian remittance customers, including payments that a customer personally authorises after being deceived. It should be read with the Australian Remittance Terms and Conditions, Limitation of Liability, Complaints Policy and applicable Australian law.

This Policy does not create an automatic right to reimbursement and does not remove any statutory reimbursement, compensation, complaint or dispute-resolution right that applies to a particular transaction under Australian law.

Authorised and unauthorised transactions

An unauthorised transaction is a transaction that you did not authorise and that was initiated without your permission. An authorised payment scam occurs where a scammer deceives you into willingly approving or instructing a transfer to the scammer or to an account controlled by the scammer. These situations may be treated differently under applicable law and under ARMF's investigation process.

Common scam types

Scammers continually change their methods. Common examples include:

• romance or dating scams, where a person builds an emotional relationship and then requests money;
• investment, cryptocurrency or trading scams, including false promises of unusually high or guaranteed returns;
• invoice, supplier and business-email-compromise scams, including altered bank details and fake payment instructions;
• CEO, employee, family-member, bank, government, police, tax-office or other impersonation scams;
• AI-generated and deepfake scams using realistic voice, video, images or messages to impersonate a trusted person or organisation;
• virus, malware, remote-access, technical-support or customer-support scams that persuade you to install software, share a screen, disclose codes or move money;
• phishing, smishing, messaging and social-media scams using false links, websites, QR codes or login pages;
• purchase, marketplace, charity, job, loan, lottery, inheritance and advance-fee scams; and
• malicious-redirection scams in which you believe you are paying a genuine recipient but the payment details have been substituted.

Your responsibility to prevent scams

You are responsible for taking reasonable care before authorising a transfer. In particular, you should:

• independently verify the recipient's identity and account details through a trusted channel;
• verify any new or changed payment instructions instead of relying only on an email, message, social-media account or telephone number supplied with the request;
• be cautious about urgency, secrecy, threats, emotional pressure, guaranteed returns or requests to move money to keep it "safe";
• keep passwords, PINs, one-time passcodes and authentication information confidential;
• not allow an unknown person remote access to your device or banking/remittance session;
• review the recipient, amount, currency, purpose and transaction details before confirming a transfer; and
• stop and investigate if ARMF, your bank, a government authority or another trusted source gives you a scam or payment warning.

ARMF warnings and fraud controls

ARMF may use transaction monitoring, screening, behavioural indicators, customer questions, verification steps and other controls designed to identify suspicious or unusual activity. ARMF may warn you, request more information, delay a transfer, refuse a transfer or restrict an account where permitted or required by law. These controls reduce risk but cannot guarantee that every scam, fraudulent communication or compromised recipient will be detected.

Proceeding after a warning

If ARMF gives you a clear transaction-specific scam, recipient or payment warning and a reasonable opportunity to stop or independently verify the transfer, you should not proceed unless you are satisfied the payment is genuine. If you nevertheless expressly instruct ARMF to proceed with a payment that you authorise, ARMF may treat the instruction as customer-authorised and may take your decision to proceed into account when assessing responsibility or reimbursement.

Subject to applicable law, ARMF will generally not be responsible merely because you later discover that a customer-authorised transfer was induced by a scam where ARMF acted in accordance with its legal obligations and applicable terms. This does not exclude responsibility to the extent ARMF caused or contributed to the loss through conduct for which liability cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

Reporting fraud or a scam

Contact ARMF immediately if you believe your account, device or credentials have been compromised, a transfer was not authorised by you, or you may have been scammed. Early reporting may improve the possibility of stopping, recalling or tracing funds, but recovery cannot be guaranteed once a payment instruction is irrevocable or the recipient has received or moved the funds.

ARMF may ask you for information reasonably necessary to investigate, including transaction details, communications with the suspected scammer, screenshots, police or platform reports, and details of any warnings you received. You should cooperate promptly, but you should never send ARMF your password, PIN or one-time passcode.

Reimbursement and compensation assessment

ARMF will assess a request for reimbursement or compensation having regard to the facts of the case, whether the transaction was authorised, any warnings or interventions given, the steps taken by you and ARMF, the speed of reporting, available recovery options, applicable law, any binding scheme or external-dispute-resolution requirements, and any responsibility that ARMF cannot lawfully exclude.

Unless applicable law or a binding scheme requires otherwise, this Policy does not promise automatic reimbursement for a customer-authorised scam payment. Where ARMF is legally required to reimburse or compensate you, ARMF will do so in accordance with the applicable requirement. Any contractual liability limitation applies only to the extent it can lawfully apply to the relevant claim.

Recovery attempts

Where reasonably practicable, ARMF may contact relevant banks, payment partners or recipient institutions and take reasonable steps to request a recall, freeze, trace or recovery. ARMF does not guarantee that a recipient institution will act, that funds remain available, or that recovery will succeed. Reasonable third-party recovery costs may be passed on only where permitted by law and appropriately disclosed.

Complaints and escalation

If you disagree with ARMF's handling of a fraud or scam report, you may make a complaint under the Complaints Policy. Any right you have to refer an eligible complaint to AFCA, the OAIC, a regulator, law-enforcement body, court or tribunal is preserved.

Contact ARMF

ARM Financial Services Pty Ltd | ABN 35 659 595 570 | ACN 659 595 570

Suite 110, Level 1, 530 Little Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

Email: support@armf.com | Phone: +61 3 8679 2233 | Website: armf.com