people are getting defrauded as they turn to squares cash app and paypals venmo to do more online banking in the pandemic creditjake dockins for the new york timespeople are getting defrauded as they turn to squares cash app and paypals venmo to do more online banking in the pandemiccharee mobley a middle school teacher in fort worth texas was a fraud victim recently on cash appcreditjake dockins for the new york timesoct 11 2020charee mobley who teaches middle school in fort worth texas had just 166 to get herself and her 17yearold daughter through the last two weeks of augustbut that money disappeared when ms mobley 37 ran into an issue with squares cash app an instant payments app that she was using in the coronavirus pandemic to pay her bills and do her bankingafter seeing an errant online shopping charge on her cash app ms mobley called what she thought was a help line for it but the line had been set up by someone who asked her to download some software which then took control of the app and drained her accounti didnt have gas money and i couldnt pay my daughters senior dues ms mobley said we basically just had to stick it out until i got paid the following weekin the pandemic people have flocked to instant payment apps like cash app paypals venmo and zelle as they have wanted to avoid retail bank branches and online commerce has become more ingrained to encourage that shift the payment apps have added services like debit cards and routing numbers so that they work more like traditional banksbut many people are unaware of how vulnerable they can be to losses when they use these services in place of banks payment apps have long had fraud rates that are three to four times higher than traditional payment methods such as credit and debit cards according to data from the security firms sift and chargeback gurusimagecreditmelissa golden for the new york timesthe fraud appears to have surged in recent months as more people use the apps at venmo daily users have grown by 26 percent since last year while the number of customer reviews mentioning the words fraud or scam has risen nearly four times as fast according to a new york times analysis of data from apptopia a firm that tracks mobile servicesdriving the surge is the apps ease of use people need just an email address to create a cash app account and a phone number to make a venmo account that simplicity has made it seamless for thieves to set up accounts and to send requests for money to other users something that was not possible with traditional bank paymentsthe apps instantaneous transactions compared to the two or three days needed for a standard bank transfer have also meant that venmo and cash app have less time to detect whether a transaction is fraudulentfast payments equals fast fraud said frank mckenna the chief fraud strategist for