7 May 2024 – Today, Women’s Shelters Canada issued an open letter with the Canadian Center for Women’s Empowerment to Canadian banks:
Recent events have highlighted the pressing issue of e-transfers being misused to perpetrate domestic violence. Women’s Shelters Canada (WSC) and the Canadian Center for Women’s Empowerment (CCFWE) urge you to take action to address abuse on your platforms by following the example set by The Commonwealth Bank in Australia and Starling Bank in the U.K.
As reported by CBC, Angie Sweeney’s ex-boyfriend sent her threatening and harassing messages through her bank’s e-transfer “Optional Message” function in the hours before he killed her. Other survivors have since shared their stories of abuse via e-transfer. Through our work, we have also heard from countless shelter and transition house workers as well as survivors across Canada that abusers are misusing banks’ e-transfer services as a tool to perpetrate illegal threats and harassment towards their current and former partners. In some cases, the abusive messages accompany child support payments. Other times, abusers send transfers of low amounts like $0.01 just to have a mechanism to threaten their victims.
Angie Sweeney’s murder underscores the urgent need for banks to reassess and strengthen their policies regarding the use of electronic transfer services.