Five Flavors of Faux Fraud

Things aren’t always as they initially appear — like unauthorized transactions.

Upon closer inspection, sometimes they aren’t unauthorized after all.

Since we’re laser focused on (a) teaching kids the financial ropes, and (b) thwarting fraudsters on our platform, we investigate all unauthorized transaction reports very carefully. With your help, extra due diligence can yield a valuable lesson for a child or an important clue to cracking a new fraudster scheme. Or, sometimes, both.

With over a decade of researching fraudulent transactions under our belt, we’ve compiled a list of classic faux fraud flavors — transactions that look like fraud, but aren’t. Here are five of the most common patterns we see and some tips for identifying them:

Hey Kids, It's Payback Time

Parents aren’t the only ones who need to fork over funds. Sometimes, kids need to make payments to parents and siblings. Here are some classic cases where kids need to pay up:

• Pay off a family bet. Colby bet Dad $2 that the Tigers wouldn’t win. They did. Pay back time.
• Pay a family member for covering a chore. Ellie fed the dog yesterday, which is Colby’s job. Pay back time.
• Reimburse a family member for a purchase. Ellie picked up In-N-Out for Colby. Pay back time.
• Pay back a family debt. Ellie borrowed a dollar from Colby at the county fair. Pay back time.

But, wait. Kids can’t initiate transfers to other family members in FamZoo. They can only request transfers between their own accounts or request funds from the primary funding card (via money requests and reimbursements), right?

3 Roads To A Rock Solid Balance: Bribe, Badger, Barter.

Keeping a bank account balance well north of zero is a healthy financial habit.

Why? Margin for money errors.

With a generous balance in place, you can:

• Prevent predatory overdraft fees or embarrassing declines. Sometimes an expense is more than expected. No worries. The extra balance will cover it.
• Avoid money anxiety. Life is full of little financial emergencies. An extra balance acts like a mini emergency fund. One less thing to worry about.
• Automate billing with confidence. Putting bills on auto-pilot saves time and avoids late fees. But, what if a bill hits sooner or harder than expected? No need to sweat the precise timing or amount when you have plenty of cushion in your balance.

The bottom line: a bigger balance is better.

Unfortunately, our data shows this habit does not come easily to kids. The last time I dug up our decline data, “insufficient balance” was far and away the most common decline reason at 62%. (That’s almost three times more common than the second most popular reason, “invalid billing address.”)

So how can you nudge your kids into maintaining healthier balances?