Commonwealth Bank of Australia has taken action against cryptocurrency scams, by starting to decline or hold for 24 hours payments to certain cryptocurrency exchanges.
To further protect customers, the bank will also be limiting payments to exchanges for cryptocurrency purchases to 10,000 Australian dollars (about $6,700) in a calendar month.
James Roberts, general manager of group fraud management services at Commonwealth Bank, said in a press release that these measures will help reduce both the number of scams and the amount of money lost by customers.
He also emphasized that customers making payments to crypto exchanges face a “significantly higher risk” of being scammed. The bank will be reviewing the impact of these measures and continue to monitor them closely.
These measures come a month after Westpac, another Australian bank, blocked payments to cryptocurrency exchanges due to the increasing number of scams and the losses customers suffer from them.
In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission has said that every crypto exchange is violating securities laws. This led to the SEC suing Binance, Coinbase, and Bittrex for allegedly operating an illegal securities exchange.
