Toss Bank said on Monday it will openly recruit “local financial fraud prevention officers” to carry out fraud-prevention activities together with the National Police Agency’s integrated response unit for telecom-based financial fraud.

The initiative is a public-private social contribution project aimed at strengthening a financial crime prevention system in local communities by using retired police officers with capabilities to respond to financial fraud. A key element is redeploying personnel with field experience into local communities to respond to increasingly sophisticated financial fraud.

Those selected will be deployed after about one month of training to become financial education instructors and receiving training on 대응 to new fraud methods. They will then provide local financial fraud prevention education, patrol vulnerable areas and carry out promotional activities.

Toss Bank selected Seoul as the first project area and plans to operate focusing on 15 areas with large-scale losses from telecom-based financial fraud. The 30 selected officers will be assigned in pairs to each police station.

Key activities include tailored financial fraud prevention education for people in their 50s and 60s, patrols of ATMs and vulnerable areas, and promotional campaigns for small business owners to prevent no-show scams and gift card scams.

A Toss Bank official said, “Even as an internet-only bank, there should be no online-offline boundary in responding to financial fraud,” and added, “We will continue to cooperate to build a local community financial safety net.”