Sheehan, who previously worked for the Australian Federal Police, said it was “almost impossible” to get customers’ money back once it had left the bank, so being able to spot suspicious activity in real time was crucial. There was a need to balance consumers’ desire for instantaneous movement of money with making sure this was done as safely as possible, he said.

The payments landscape changed dramatically in 2018 when Australia moved to a system of near-instant payments between bank accounts – and there were warnings at the time it would raise the risk of fraud.

While banks are investing heavily anti-scam measures, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) last week said more needed to be done, saying the big four banks only detected and stopped about 13 per cent of scam payments.

Sheehan did not take issue with ASIC’s 13 per cent figure, but stressed there was a “global crime wave” in which organised crime groups were attempting to manipulate bank customers, as opposed to targeting banks directly.

ASIC also said banks had inconsistent and narrow approaches to determining if customers received compensation for scams, and Sheehan agreed the whole industry could adopt clearer guidance in this area. Banks do not reimburse most scam victims, typically only paying compensation if the bank believes it has made an error.

NAB will release survey data on Wednesday, showing one in five Australians were affected by a cyberattack, scam or data breach in the last year, with average losses of $569. Sixty per cent of these problems were caused by data breaches such as the mass breaches at Optus and Medibank Private last year.

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The survey of 2000 respondents suggested younger people aged between 18 and 29 were the least concerned about being victims of scams, cyberattacks or data breaches, but were among the most likely to be caught up in such incidents.

Sheehan said this was consistent with the bank’s experience, and he said scammers would seek to exploit the fact younger people were sometimes more trusting of technology. He said online shopping scams or scams where people impersonated an entity such as the Tax Office, for example, had often been effective against younger people.

“They are age-agnostic, and there is no evidence to suggest that young people are safer from those than older people,” Sheehan said.