Westpac has teamed with telco Optus to develop and deploy a new anti-phone impersonation scam technology, the pair announced today, enabling customers to contact the bank directly through the Westpac app.

The new service, known as SafeCall, will ensure Westpac customers receive calls, and know they are receiving calls, from official Westpac reps directly via the bank’s app, with customers sent an alert when the call is made.

Calls from the bank are verified by Optus, with the reason for the call (such as “Home loan follow up”, as shown in the image) also displayed in-app.

“This will help give customers more certainty in the legitimacy of the call, at a time when bank impersonation scams are among the most common scam types impacting customers,” Westpac said in a statement.

SafeCall also enables customers to call the bank directly via the Westpac app, helping to avoid misdials or potential social engineering tricks from scammers to call their requested number.

Though the service was co-developed with Optus, it will be made available to all customers regardless of their telco provider.

The branded calling solution was also developed by cloud-based communications tech developer Vonage, a subsidiary of Ericsson.

Westpac said its SafeCall solution will be progressive rolled out to its customers in the coming months.

The feature is similar to CBA’s CallerCheck service, launched in early 2023, which also triggers an in-app notification that displays whether an incoming call from a CommBank representative is genuine.

Westpac chief executive Peter King said the bank is continuing to invest in scam prevention and detection measures,  which he notes has a 69 per cent detection rate for all scam cases.

Westpac counts that it has saved customers more than $400 million in losses to scammers, and has invested more than $100 million in new detection and prevention measures, including initiatives delivered as part of the Scam Safe Accord.

“Westpac SafeCall will help us reduce bank impersonation scams and make Australia an even harder target for scammers,” King said.

Westpac has also announced the addition of 94,000 Westpac numbers to a ‘Do Not Originate’ list to prevent scammers from impersonating the bank’s phone numbers.