Safer payments at VibePay 🔒

If you’ve been using VibePay for some time, you’ll know exactly how to make a payment to your pal for the drinks he got you the night before, and even how to pay for a product or service from an Instagram seller. For the sake of our new users and growing community, let's take a look at where VibePay sits in the financial sector.

VibePay is an Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated firm. Who is the FCA? And what does that mean for you?

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Financial Conduct Authority

The FCA is an independent body in the UK that gives permission to financial institutions to provide services to customers . Financial institutions include banks, insurance companies, investment companies and, more recently, payment service providers like VibePay. The FCA doesn't just give any and every company the go-ahead to offer financial services. Every firm goes through an in-depth analysis of what they do to determine how safe it would be to let the service out into the wild. Once approved, the FCA monitors regulated firms on a regular basis.

One of the key things the FCA asks from regulated firms is to make efforts to protect customers from financial crime. This includes avoiding scams, fraud, money laundering or financing terrorism. This is to ensure that firms take necessary steps to protect their users. As long as VibePay stays regulated, you can trust that we are doing just that! At VibePay we take this responsibility seriously and carefully consider all issues brought to our attention.

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VibePay is not a bank

Remember earlier we mentioned "payment service providers"? VibePay falls under this class of financial institutions. We provide a service that allows payments to be made, but we are not a bank. The biggest difference between us and a bank is that we do not hold your money to be reused as loans or anything like that. Only your bank account provider can hold your money and, since they are also regulated by the FCA but with permissions to keep funds.

VibePay helps you move your money at your request, to whoever you chose. Thanks to Open Banking, we are able to do this quickly, with less hassle by not requiring sort codes and account numbers, and with better visibility. As we do not hold funds, when you do make a payment, it is your bank who will authorise or decline it. This is a good thing because, just like us, your bank cares about your money and where it goes - but what happens with an incorrect payment?

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You’ve made a mistake, what should you do?

If you action a payment by accident, to the wrong person or believe that you have been scammed, here is what you should do:

1. Contact your bank provider. Let them know what happened and make a request to get your money back. Unfortunately, this does not mean that they can always get it back for you, but mention it straight away.
2. Confirm that you have not given anyone else access to your bank account, bank cards, or online banking details. If you have, change these immediately.
3. Contact VibePay, as your payment service provider, to make us aware of the situation. We can place temporary holds on your account, which will stop any continued use. It also alerts us to potential fraudulent activity in the community, so we can let our users know to be extra vigilant. We will also report cases of fraud to the banks in question, the National Crime Agency, to our regulator the FCA, and if requested the police too.

Knowing exactly how VibePay works is important, and we will continue to educate you on how to use our app and stay safe financially. We have a team who look into each and every case of fraud raised, and action is always taken from our end. We will always be open about what services are available, so that you can understand how much control we, your bank and you have.

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