Venmo, Zelle, Cash App put on notice after claims payment apps leave consumers vulnerable to fraud

NEW YORK CITY -- Venmo, Zelle and Cash App are leaving consumers susceptible to fraud that's "draining slope accounts of important sums of money," Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said successful letters to the companies that ain those fiscal apps. He demanded they summation protections.

Bragg's letters said helium was penning "in effect to a increasing fig of incidents" involving fraud and theft "through the exploitation of your company's mobile fiscal applications connected idiosyncratic physics devices specified arsenic iPhones."

Peer-to-peer outgo services present grip an estimated $1 trillion successful payments and the territory lawyer said "frauds and scams person proliferated" arsenic usage climbs.

In the past year, determination person been thefts stretching from Los Angeles, wherever respective radical were robbed of thousands of dollars done Venmo astatine knifepoint, to Orlando, wherever a pistillate had thousands drained from her Venmo aft a kid asked to usage her phone. Similar thefts and robberies person been publically reported successful West Virginia, Louisiana, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee, Virginia and elsewhere crossed the United States.

"These crimes impact an unauthorized idiosyncratic gaining entree to unlocked devices and past draining slope accounts of important sums of money, making purchases with mobile fiscal applications, and utilizing fiscal accusation from the applications to unfastened caller accounts," Bragg's letters said. "Offenders besides instrumentality implicit the phone's information by changing passwords, betterment accounts, and exertion settings. The easiness with which offenders tin cod five- and adjacent six-figure windfalls successful a substance of minutes is incentivizing a ample fig of individuals to perpetrate these crimes, which are creating superior financial, and successful immoderate cases physical, harm to our residents."

The territory lawyer called connected Venmo, Zelle and Cash App to follow further information measures, including imposing limits connected transactions, requiring secondary verification of up to a time and amended monitoring of antithetic activity.

"I americium acrophobic astir the troubling emergence successful amerciable behaviour that has developed due to the fact that of insufficient information measures connected with your bundle and concern argumentation decisions," Bragg's letters said.

He is requesting meetings with the companies.

Square Inc, the proprietor of Cash App and Paypal, the proprietor of Venmo, did not instantly respond to ABC News' petition for comment.

Reacting to the Manhattan DA's comments, a spokesperson for Early Warning Services, LLC, the web relation of Zelle, said the institution was "aware of isolated transgression incidents described successful the Manhattan District Attorney's letter.

"Providing a harmless and reliable work to consumers is the apical precedence of Early Warning Services, LLC, the web relation of Zelle, and our 2,100 participating banks and recognition unions," the connection continued. " As a effect of our continued efforts to physique connected Zelle's beardown instauration of security, little than 1 tenth of 1 percent of transactions are reported arsenic fraud oregon scams, and that percent keeps getting smaller."

In the statement, the spokesperson said its network's "participating fiscal institutions are required to reimburse consumers for confirmed fraud claims. Consumers should interaction the section authorities and their slope and recognition national if they were a unfortunate of a transgression to statesman the claims process."