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Hand-to-hand purchase and sale: never rely on the buyer’s smartphone…

Now that private individuals want to reduce ecological and economic waste, it is only natural that the second-hand market (purchase-sale) is constantly increasing. Cars, bicycles, tools, etc., everything is there and that’s good. Unfortunately, as recent events have once again shown, this market also attracts ill-intentioned people. Fraud is becoming more and more frequent.

Online payments are taking an ever-increasing place in this type of transactions due to three factors:

the use of a smartphone is growing in our daily lives,
the wish not to be tricked by counterfeit banknotes,
the fact that transactions above €3,000 in cash are no longer legally allowed.

And this is where you have to be particularly careful: one of the most common scams used in face-to-face transactions is that during the exchange, the buyer will show the seller a so-called proof of wire transfer or payment. You shouldn’t be fooled, it is now very easy to make a photo edit that indicates that a nice amount has been transferred to the seller. This type of proceeding should never be trusted.

What can we do?

Based on this sad observation and with the desire to build a secure solution that encourages second-hand purchase and sale, Digiteal (a payment institution certified by the National Bank of Belgium) has created an additional service: the Trusted Payment (Digitrust).

In a nutshell: the identities of the people involved in the transaction are verified, the money is secured before the meeting and, during the exchange, if the buyer confirms his purchase and releases the funds to the seller, the latter is immediately notified on his own smartphone: no magic trick possible…

This is the reason why AutoScout24 recommends using Digiteal.

MORE INFORMATION

Cedric Neve, founder:

“With its core project, Digiteal reduces the ecological waste of hundreds of millions of paper invoices that are still sent to Belgian individuals every year.

A second life for objects is also a good initiative in many ways. It was therefore quite naturally that the team decided to tackle this problem, which is in line with our values: societal objective, trust, transparency.

Having these two services through our application gives even more added value to private individuals.”