Company: BCS
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000312069-25-000114
Chunk: 337

Company: BARCLAYS PLC
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form: 20-F
Chunk 337
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 Post Office and LINK to ensure customers have access to cash and banking services through Banking Hubs and other touchpoints being delivered on a shared basis. We were pleased to make a joint commitment to open 350 banking hubs over the course of this parliament, alongside the major retail banks and the Post Office - this is in additional to the 103 currently operational (correct as at 31/12/24). We are committed to our full physical offering across the UK, with a complete refresh of our self-service devices well underway, with 183 of our 216 branches now having 24/7 cash deposit and account servicing capability via externally placed Smart ATMs. Alongside these changes, we are investing in multi-skilled training for our colleagues, so they are better able to serve customers in ways that meet their needs today as well as breaking down internal barriers to enable quicker resolution of customer queries. Economic crime and scams We take our responsibility to protect our customers&#8217; money very seriously and are proud to have one of the lowest scam rates and highest reimbursement rates in the industry1. This is due to our continued investment in robust security systems and our established programme to educate customers and reduce the likelihood of them falling victim to scams. We have a dedicated Fraud and Scams hub on the Barclays website, which hosts a variety of content and resources to help the public learn how to keep themselves safe. Additionally, for each of the 50 million+ payments our UK customers make every month, our fraud detection systems and machine learning models determine in less than a second if it is likely to be a fraudster rather than the customer, or if our customer appears at risk of being scammed. If the transaction appears as risky, the customer is presented with additional checks prior to the payment being released. We continue to invest in security features aimed at providing protection against fraud and scams, including &#8216;App ID&#8217;, which allows customers to verify that they are speaking to a Barclays colleague and not an impersonator. We are also part of the &#8216;Do not originate&#8217; scheme, created in partnership with the telecommunications industry, UK Finance and Ofcom, aimed at preventing our most common inbound helpline phone numbers from being used in a scam. We are committed to providing measures that help prevent Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams taking place and building increased consumer protection standards for customers through both the UK Payment Systems Regulator's( PSR) new APP Scam Regulations that came into effect in October 2024 and the