> With Paypal/Venmo/app-du-jour, in the event of an account takeover, the result might be different.
You are saying it as if checks vs apps are the only two option.
> On the other hand, good luck explaining the police such obscure technical details as "they installed a proxy on my IP" or "they sim-swapped me to intercept the one-time password".
Why would I explain any such thing? It is not my job to know how the bank got hacked.
The explanation is that you see a transaction you are not recognising. You point at it and say “i didn’t authorise that one” and let them investigate.
They have the logs, you don’t. This is probably the worst day of your life or close to it, while it is just a normal regular occurence for your bank. They have policies to handle it from their side. They will ask a lot of question, perhaps ask you to make a police report.
I ask you this, if you have chest pain and shortness of breath, would you:
a; jurry-rig an oscilloscope to check your ECG, start reading wikipedia all about cardiology, and then find a nurse to tell them about how concerned you are about your QT interval
Or
b; go to a hospital and tell them that you have chest pain and shortness of breath?
You have a lot of good faith in what your bank would or would not do, and they have a conflict of interest: if they side with you, they would need to make you whole — out of their own pocket. The hospital has the opposite conflict of interest: they are actually interested in helping you — and charging you (or your insurance, or NHS, or somebody).
If you get your case against the bank in front of a judge, you need to prove your claim of an account takeover. The bank does not need to prove anything. If you haven't convinced the judge, no money for you.
If the transfer is instantaneous, the fraudster could have cashed out already from the other bank account. There is nothing in the other party’s bank by then.
The chargebacks in credit cards come mostly from the credit card issuer pockets, and are funded by credit card fees. Not the case with banks that don’t take any fees on transfers.
You are saying it as if checks vs apps are the only two option.
> On the other hand, good luck explaining the police such obscure technical details as "they installed a proxy on my IP" or "they sim-swapped me to intercept the one-time password".
Why would I explain any such thing? It is not my job to know how the bank got hacked.