Update: I finally got my bank's app to stop flagging my rent check as fraud

Every month for like 6 months, my $1,200 rent payment to my landlord through Zelle would get blocked and I'd have to call. This time I tried sending it as two smaller payments, $600 each, a day apart, and it went right through. Is this a common workaround or did I just get lucky?

4 comments

4 Comments

jakejones2mo ago

Ever have a friend who kept getting their car payment flagged? They started sending it as "Auto Loan" instead of the dealership name and the bank stopped freezing it. Maybe your bank just gets spooked by big round numbers going to the same person every month.

kelly6382mo ago

Change the payment name to something generic like "car payment" or "auto loan." My bank flagged mine for months because I sent it to "Smithtown Ford." Once I switched the label, the holds stopped. The fraud systems really do get tripped up by specific business names on regular transfers.

hill.margaret2mo ago

That's wild but makes total sense lol. My buddy's bank kept flagging his rent check until he just put "housing" in the memo line.

seth_singh2011d ago

Now that you mention putting 'auto loan' or 'car payment' as the name, I think there's another angle nobody's touched on." Some banks actually track the amount going out every month, not just the name. If your $1,200 rent is the same exact sum on the same date, their system might flag it as a "pattern of unusual activity" rather than fraud. The two smaller payments trick works because the amounts are different and not on the same day, so the algorithm doesn't connect the dots. My old credit union did this with my $150 gym membership - they'd block it every single month until I changed the amount to $148 one time and $152 the next. Now it goes through fine. The fraud system is really just looking for anything too perfect or predictable, not just big names or round numbers.