Previous studies have found that motivation to detect deception impairs participants' ability to do so when truthful/deceitful statements are presented via an audio‐visual medium. However, the effect of motivation on detecting deception may be different if statements are presented via a different medium. The present study explored how motivation influences accuracy in detecting deception in an audio‐only context. Eighty‐one participants (45 women) were randomly assigned to a high‐motivation or low‐motivation condition, and participants' motivation was manipulated via a monetary reward. Participants were then asked to judge 10 audio‐only statements about a travelling experience on a binary scale (truth or deceit). A 2 (motivation: high vs low) × 2 (messages veracity: truth‐accuracy vs lie‐accuracy) × 2 (participant gender) mixed model analysis of variance revealed that highly motivated participants performed better than less‐motivated participants did in terms of truth‐accuracy and total accuracy rates but not in terms of lie‐accuracy rates. The theoretical and practical implications of the present results are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.