BANK OF IRELAND has issued a warning about a new scam aimed at its business customers.

The bank has told customers to “never, ever” share codes received on the BOI app with others.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Paul O’Brien from Bank of Ireland’s fraud team explained what customers can expect from scammers.

“A customer will get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the bank.

“The caller will ask the customer to go to a website, saying something like ‘this is for a live chat service’ or ‘you we need to verify your PC’. But in reality, clicking a link on that site is going to allow the fraudster to get remote access to the customer’s PC,” he said.

From there, the fraudster will set up outgoing payments from the account, using authorisation codes the customer will receive on their banking app.

“Very simply, we’re saying to people if you get a call from someone who asks you to go to a website or to click on a link, hang up.

“And most importantly, if anyone ever asks you for a code from your online banking app, they’re a fraudster. Never, ever share those codes with anyone, even if they say they’re from Bank of Ireland.”

O’Brien says similar scams that particularly target businesses have become more common across the UK and Europe in the last month.

He was unable to give an estimate of how much money Irish customers have lost to frauds so far.

“Losses can vary on how much a customer has in their account, and a fraudster unfortunately will try to take as much as they can,” he said.

“Our priority is no one loses any money, and that’s why we’re getting out with this alert.”