NationThailand-Sept 15
The Bank of Thailand (BOT) and the Thai Bankers’ Association have announced a new initiative to swiftly unblock the bank accounts of innocent individuals caught in the crossfire of online financial fraud. The move follows a weekend of widespread public complaints about account freezes. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Daranee Saeju, Assistant Governor of the BOT’s Payment Systems Policy and Financial Consumer Protection Department, explained that while cases of direct device hacking have been eliminated since the start of the year, the problem of victims being tricked into transferring money themselves remains widespread. This has created a secondary issue where a process to “trace and seize” funds has inadvertently led to the suspension of accounts belonging to honest people. “Criminals are capable of tricking unrelated individuals into becoming involved by using their accounts, which can affect law-abiding citizens,” Daranee stated.
To address this, banks have been given new guidelines to unfreeze an account within four hours or at most one working day, down from the previous processing time of 3-7 days.
This expedited process applies to individuals who contact their financial institution after their account has been temporarily suspended and are found to have no links to fraud.
According to data from the past week (7-11 September), approximately 10,000 accounts were suspended, a figure authorities said had not seen a significant increase. However, a review of over 100 cases from Sunday (14 September) showed that only 11, or 10 per cent, of those accounts were actually unblocked, as most were found to have a direct link to the fraudulent money trail. The central bank is also developing a system for the automatic and proactive unblocking of innocent accounts, even without the user’s report. This measure is expected to be operational within a week. Read more at: https://www.nationthailand.com/business/banking-finance/40055461
