This summer, two more states gave banks a new tool against elder fraud. Georgia’s transaction hold law took effect on July 1, 2026, and North Carolina’s took effect when it was signed six days later. Both let a bank pause a suspicious payment from an older customer while it looks into what’s going on. In Washington, a bipartisan House bill introduced in September would set a federal version.
That’s real progress, and banks asked for it. But elder fraud hold laws solve one problem, the legal permission to stop a payment. They leave a harder one untouched: what the bank actually does with the days it just bought.
The scale behind the push
People aged 60 and over reported more than $7.7 billion in fraud losses in 2025, up 59% from the year before, according to the FBI’s 2025 IC3 annual report. The average loss was $38,500, and more than 12,400 people reported losing over $100,000.
Banks see the same pattern from the inside. In a single year (mid-2022 to mid-2023), financial institutions filed more than 155,000 suspicious activity reports tied to elder financial exploitation, covering roughly $27 billion in suspicious activity, according to FinCEN’s analysis. About 80% of those reports involved scams, as opposed to theft by someone the older adult knew.
Banks want more help here. In the ABA Foundation survey covered below, nearly 90% of banks in states without a hold law said one would be beneficial.
What elder fraud hold laws actually give a bank
As of early 2025, about half of US states had a law letting banks hold or delay suspicious transactions involving older or vulnerable customers, according to the ABA Foundation’s survey report on state hold laws. Georgia and North Carolina have joined since. There is still no federal law.
The details vary a lot by state, which is part of the problem for any bank operating in more than one. Georgia’s law covers people 65 and older and allows an initial hold of 15 business days, with one extension of up to 15 more, but only after a bank has put training and written review procedures in place, according to a legal analysis by Adams and Reese. North Carolina allows an initial hold of 30 business days, extendable by up to 30 more, per Moore & Van Allen’s summary of the new law. The federal bill introduced in September would go further, requiring covered institutions to hold suspicious transactions leaving a senior’s account for up to 90 days, contact the account’s trusted contacts, and giving banks legal protection for acting in good faith.
That legal protection is a big deal for banks. In the ABA Foundation’s survey of 158 banks, respondents called safe harbor provisions critical, because freezing a customer’s own money without that protection can expose the bank to a lawsuit.
A hold only works if the customer comes around
Here’s the part the laws can’t fix. In a scam, the customer often isn’t a bystander to the payment. They want it to go through. They’ve been convinced their grandson is in jail, or that their bank account has been compromised and the money needs to move somewhere safe, or that a new relationship is real.
The ABA Foundation’s survey captures this. One respondent noted that a hold law can be very effective once the customer understands and agrees they’re a victim. Getting them there is the hard part. More than 45% of banks that had used a hold reported negative reactions from customers, and about 17% said a customer closed their account after a delay.
One respondent summed up the position banks are in: “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.” Customers are angry when the bank holds their money, and just as angry when they lose it and feel the bank should have stepped in.
The hold is the easy part
Placing a hold is the quick part. What happens next takes days, and the survey shows banks feel it. Among banks that had used their state’s hold law, more than half (52.4%) said banks should be able to hold transactions longer than the law allows, to leave room for a thorough investigation.
According to the survey, banks use that time to report to adult protective services or law enforcement, reach out to a trusted contact, and talk the customer through the risk. All three depend on the same thing, which is evidence. A conversation that starts with “we’re concerned about this payment” is easy for a convinced customer to wave off. A conversation that starts with “the account you’re sending money to doesn’t belong to the person you think it does” is much harder to argue with.
That’s the gap worth closing. Detection already flags the payment, and the hold law now gives the bank time. What’s often missing is a fast, verified answer about who is actually on the receiving end. This is the problem PayVerify is built around, verifying the recipient of a payment before it’s submitted to the network, so a flagged transaction can be resolved, not just paused. And in states without a hold law, that answer has to arrive before the payment goes out, because there may be no legal room to hold it afterward.
It also helps to reach the customer earlier, before a payment exists. KnowScam gives people a way to check a suspicious email or text, and offers a 24/7 US-based Scam Hotline, so an older customer has somewhere to turn before the scammer’s story has fully taken hold.
The question for your next fraud review
If your bank operates in a hold-law state, the law has given you time. The question worth asking is what your team actually knows on day one of a hold, and how much of the next two weeks is spent trying to find out.
If you operate where there’s no hold law yet, the question is simpler and more urgent. When a payment from an older customer gets flagged, what would it take to know who’s on the other end before it leaves?
