TSB Bank, which happens to be a retail and commercial bank in the UK is all set to is impose a ban on more than five million of its British banking customers sending money to two prominent cryptocurrency exchanges amid concerns associated with cyber-crime.
According to reports, the institution is gearing up to bar its customers from sending money to trading platforms such as Binance and Kraken on concern that fraudsters are being allowed to create e-wallets and steal user’s money because of poor security checks.
The bank views that Binance, which happens to be one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, as a hotbed for scammers. This is not the first time when TSB has drawn out associations between cryptocurrency and fraudulent activities. The British institution’s Head of Fraud Ashley Hart has also been vocal about crimes in the crypto sector in both newspapers as well as radio. Hart also stressed the “dramatic spike in fraud” and remarked that the existing cryptocurrency exchanges are “rife with fraudsters,” that siphoning off with massive sums as “they capitalize on the surging interest in this type of investment.”
The exec of TSB Bank was also quoted saying,
“Anyone approached to invest in crypto should be extremely wary as these approaches are overwhelmingly scams.”
TSB Bank isn’t the only British financial institution barring cryptocurrency dealings
Apart from TSB Bank, Barclays is another major bank in the United Kingdom that decided to prevent their customers from transferring money to digital currency exchanges such as Binance and SwissBor. Fintechs such as Monzo and Starling also followed the suit. While the representatives of the institutions stated that the move stemmed from bad actors in the space, they were keen on resuming services.
As per the latest stats, UK users had reportedly lost more than $82 million during the past year, most of which originated from investment scams via social media. In addition to that, almost half of 50% of such scams were linked to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.