The criticism comes as Which? called for vital fraud protections to be made mandatory and revealed that over £1 billion is estimated to have been lost to bank transfer scams within the last three years.

During that period, the sums taken through this type of fraud, commonly known as authorised push payment (APP) fraud, have increased rapidly, while the payments regulator and banks have been slow to implement protective measures for consumers.

Which? has publicly called-out RBS and HSBC for being unable to confirm a date for when they would introduce an additional name-checking system called Confirmation of Payee (COP). The scheme will make it harder for customers to become victims of such scams or commit errors by alerting them if the name of the person they want to pay does not match that on the recipient’s account.

Gareth Shaw, head of money at Which?, said: “It is vital for all banks to commit to basic name-check security, and the whole industry should sign up and follow through on the protections offered by the scams code.”

According to Which?’s data, £97 million could already have been lost in the first three months of 2020 alone, The Herald reports. 

Worringly, data suggests that almost a third of the total losses since 2017, equating to £320m, could have been prevented if a simple system of checking names on bank transfers had been in place at that time.

The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has only directed the six biggest banking groups to sign up by March 31. But Which? has urged that all banks must join the scheme in order for it to have the maximum effect.

An RBS spokesman said that the bank hoped to introduce COP in the “coming weeks”. He said: “We believe Confirmation of Payee is an important part in protecting our customers from scams, fraudsters and from entering account numbers incorrectly. It is therefore an area of focus for us and we are working with other banks and the industry to ensure we introduce this.”

The deadline for introducing COP was pushed back from July last year after the PSR consulted banks. The PSR told them that they must be ready to respond to other banks’ identity checks from last month and to perform their own checks from March 31.