The popularity of digital payments helped many Filipinos to access goods and services while in quarantines, isolations, and on-and-off lockdowns during the pandemic.  It also made many businesses continue to function even with the global slowdown due to fear of the virus. Work-from-home has become much easier for parents, and online learning is more comfortable for students because of the safety digital payment offers.  Also, with online payments, users can pay bills for credit cards, electricity, water, and more. Online shopping, grocery shopping, and paying for food deliveries have become convenient because of digital payment solutions. This technology also answers the consumers’ concern about health risks associated with handling paper bills and coins when paying for goods and services.

With people seeing the benefits of digital payments, users have grown exponentially. The increase of usage and transactions across all spectrums of the society attracted legitimate users but also got the attention of opportunists and scammers who are creatively ramping up their methods to trick users into giving up their money via money transfer or taking over accounts via phishing.

I’ve been a long-time e-wallet user and I always get attempts from cybercriminals to scam me. The attempts are, however, not exclusive to any digital payments platform. Majority regularly get scam and phishing attacks from the internet bad guys.

Based on my experience, two types…