Plain-English answers for Australian businesses, written for the moment a payment looks wrong. No jargon, no sales pitch — just what to do.
Call your bank immediately and ask them to attempt a recall or trace on the payment — speed is the single biggest factor in getting money back. Then report it to Scamwatch and the police (ReportCyber), warn anyone else in your business who pays invoices, and change any email passwords that may have been compromised.
Treat it as a scam until a phone call proves otherwise. Call the supplier on a number you already had on file — not the number in the email — and confirm the change verbally. Genuine suppliers expect this call and will not be offended. If the email adds urgency, pressures you not to call, or arrives near a large invoice, the risk is higher again.
Never verify bank details using the contact details on the invoice itself. Call the supplier on a number you already had on file, confirm the BSB and account number verbally, check the account name matches the ABN you are trading with, and record who verified it and when. Treat every change of bank details as a new supplier, not an update.
Check the sender domain character by character, compare the bank details against what you paid last time, confirm the ABN on the invoice matches the business you actually deal with, and be suspicious of any invoice that adds urgency. Most fake invoices are copies of real ones with only the payment details changed, so the document itself will look correct.
Prevention comes from controls, not vigilance. Verify supplier bank details by phone before the first payment, require a second person to approve any change of bank details, compare every invoice against the supplier's payment history, put a hard rule around urgent payment requests, and automate the checks so they still happen on your busiest week.
Invoice fraud is when someone tricks a business into paying money to an account they control, usually by sending a fake invoice or by changing the bank details on a real one. The most common form in Australia is payment redirection, where an attacker reads a business's email, intercepts a genuine invoice, and alters only the payment details.
RILLA Shield auto-scans invoices and payee details before money moves, flags supplier bank changes, and can hold a pay run on its own when something doesn't add up.
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