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United Kingdom Bitcoin

Chase UK To Ban Cryptocurrency Purchases Over Fraud Fears (ft.com) 60

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Chase UK, JPMorgan's UK Bank, has told its customers that it will not carry out transactions related to crypto assets.

The Financial Times writes:

JPMorgan's UK bank will stop customers buying cryptocurrencies from next month to combat rising numbers of criminals using digital assets to target victims.

The ban by Chase UK, which notified customers by email on Tuesday, marks a step up as British lenders try to stop their networks being used for scams and frauds.

While several banks, including HSBC and NatWest, have set restrictions on their customers' purchases for crypto, outright bans are rare.

Chase said its UK block, which will come into effect from October 16, had been informed by data showing the high rate of crypto scams and fraud in the UK, including fake investments and false celebrity endorsements.


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Chase UK To Ban Cryptocurrency Purchases Over Fraud Fears More

Chase UK To Ban Cryptocurrency Purchases Over Fraud Fears

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  • Finally (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    someone gets it. Crypto is a fraud!

    • Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @06:10PM (#63879481)

      banks shouldn't be telling their customers what they can, and cannot spend their money on.

      • You're not your bank's customer

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Banks have to comply with anti-money laundering legislation.

      • Sure they should (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @06:34PM (#63879549)
        because there's all sorts of rules and regulations that can make the banks liable for fraud.

        They could care less where you spend your money, but when their fraud department is inundated with complaints, many that credibly could be called fraud, then it's well within their purview to refuse to do business with certain types of businesses as a protective measure for themselves.

        You're welcome to, as other's noted, find an institution that'll do business with such high risk products. They're going to charge you an arm and a leg to do so in order to make up for the losses, or they're going to defraud you. Pick your poison.

        Personally I'll just skip the poison.

        • In all the years that crypto payments have taken place, there haven't been any actions taken against banks for allowing their customers to send money to exchanges.

          • and said "this transaction was fraudulent"? Not once?

            This isn't about gov't action (though I wish it was, the gov't should regulate and crack down so this stuff goes away before it does any more damage).

            This is a bank looking at the costs and losses from supporting crypto and saying "it ain't worth it". Banks are required to protect their customer's money from fraudsters. These requirements were put in place because they were cheerfully letting people get ripped off so long as it didn't cost them mo

        • They could care less where you spend your money

          I'm sure they couldn't.

          • As long as they don't have to spend resources dealing with the fraud, yeah. The problem here is that they keep getting calls from people ripped off by dodgy crypto companies, and more often than not they're on the hook for those losses.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          because there's all sorts of rules and regulations that can make the banks liable for fraud.

          They could care less where you spend your money, but when their fraud department is inundated with complaints, many that credibly could be called fraud, then it's well within their purview to refuse to do business with certain types of businesses as a protective measure for themselves.

          You're welcome to, as other's noted, find an institution that'll do business with such high risk products. They're going to charge you an arm and a leg to do so in order to make up for the losses, or they're going to defraud you. Pick your poison.

          Personally I'll just skip the poison.

          This.

          In the UK banks can be held liable for fraud if they knowingly let customers send fraudulent transactions (it's a complex law but aimed at protecting the most vulnerable so not quite as daft as it sounds in a single sentence). However this kind of thing is quite easy to bypass when you know how. Chase is not allowing you to directly buy crypto, this just means you'll have to transfer the money to another bank or service that will.

          As the parent so eloquently mentioned, you can opt to do business w

        • They could care less where you spend your money

          Surely you mean they couldn't care less?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Hey man, can you go over to that guy over there and give him $50? He'll give you a package, just bring that back to me. I'll pay you back, honest.

        • Hey man, can you go over to that guy over there and give him $50? He'll give you a package, just bring that back to me. I'll pay you back, honest.

          That guy over there will give you a URL link for your $50 ... and we all know now how that has turned out.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Yeah, if it was only that I don't think the banks would care that much. If you spend your money on dumbass stuff it's your problem.

            Possibly they're concerned about actual fraud, shady exchange style. Possibly they're concerned about being the middle man for transactions involving drugs, weapons, cell phone chips, North Koreans and other things that raise the ire of the US government.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by khchung ( 462899 )

        banks shouldn't be telling their customers what they can, and cannot spend their money on.

        Ok, first you tell your government to stop prosecuting banks for where they send money on behalf of their customers, the banks will be the first to rejoice and remove all limitations (which is a huge overhead to them).

      • I view this like the signs up where gift/cash cards are these days, warning things like that the IRS will not demand payment with these, that giving the numbers over the phone means it is fraud, etc...

        The odds of cryptocurrency stuff with the average customer is so likely to be fraud I view this is a good thing.

      • So the government should step in and force private companies to do business of a sort they do not want to?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nyet ( 19118 )

      someone gets it. Cash is a fraud!

      • Then why do you buy cryptocurrency with cash? Why aren't you in this crypto-utopia you've been promising us, where cash was no longer necessary, because you can just trade crypto?

      • "Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Not Einstein

        I'm off to buy some salmon steaks for dinner with my fraud.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Dollar,Euro,Yen ..... are fraud

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      At least it's used a lot for fraudulent behavior and payment for ransomware, so if the ability to use cryptocurrency it will be harder to perform a lot of illegal behavior.

  • Also, banks have some pretty scammy policies for their customers. In that all policies are designed to benefit the bank and not us regular people.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Known Nutter ( 988758 )

      In that all policies are designed to benefit the bank and not us regular people.

      So your bank's fraudulent transaction policy has no benefit to you and other regular people? You mean to tell me that the policy the bank follows which allows you to contest fraudulent transactions and in most cases have those funds credited back to your account immediately are of no benefit whatsoever to regular people?

      Bank Bad! Everything BAD!

      • Not in the slightest. Banks always find someone else to pay for fraud. Here in the US they refuse to implement common scene policies to protect account holders from a variety of types of fraud. Banks are happy to let someone social engineer away my Mom's pension deposits. But big scary crypto is dangerous, precisely because the fraud is costing banks money.

        • But now you've moved the goalpost. Your comment wasn't about who pays for the fraud. You said that the bank's policies have no benefits for you.

          I'm not sure what you mean by the bank being happy to let someone social engineer away your mom's deposits. Are you saying the perpetrator social engineers the bank employee, or your mom? If the former, and the bank makes mom whole again after having the fraud reported, then the policy has benefited you. If mom is out to lunch and cashes out to tricksters all the

          • I've not moved the goalposts so much as you have deviated from the original thread of discussion. My original point still stands: In that all policies are designed to benefit the bank and not us regular people.

            I'm not sure what you mean by the bank being happy to let someone social engineer away your mom's deposits.

            I'm saying banks aren't held accountable and therefor give fuck all about crimes that occur using their business or done against their customers. Bad policies, poor security practices, these are not technically illegal and currently carry very little civil liability. Since it is difficult to hold a ba

  • if you think that the banks are doing this to "protect the consumers interest" wake the fuck up.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 )
      If it prevents the banks from collapsing from the weight of enough customers losing all their money and taking my money with it, then it benefits me.

    • Who cares if they're doing it in the customer's interest, in their own interest, or in Cthulu's interest?

      They're doing it, it's a good thing, and that's what matters here.

  • Not really a problem. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @06:17PM (#63879501)

    They just won't facilitate or be involved in the transactions. Seems reasonable enough. If they don't want to touch it, they don't have to. They aren't preventing you from doing whatever you like in the crypto space. You are free to withdraw the money or transfer it to another institution that will accommodate your needs.

    • Actually I'm in two minds about this. On the one side they should do what they need to prevent fraud, on the other side they should be an absolutely neutral common carrier with no influence on what or where you spend your money on.

  • ALL legitimate financial institutions should refuse to deal with cryptocurrency
    It has NO legitimate use case
    At best, it's risky gambling, at worst, a scam

  • nah bro (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by blackomegax ( 807080 )
    Cryptocurrencies offer financial independence. No intermediaries, no gatekeepers, and no need to rely on big institutions. This gives individuals greater control over their financial destiny and reduces the risk of being exploited.

    Once a crypto transaction is recorded on the blockchain, it's practically irreversible. This feature protects users from fraudulent chargebacks (one of the greatest profit centers of Chase...funny that) and ensures that transactions are final and secure.

    The crypto community is

    • Except for the people who control the crypto codebase as well as the array of closed source and for profit tools that the space entirely relies on to make the system anywhere close to reasonable for normal people to use.

      It's been a decade, there hasn't been a relevant use for blockchains outside cryptocurrencies in that timeframe.

      The mere fact more than 1 crypto currency exists cuts against the very idea you are talking about. Go read the El Salvador story from a couple weeks back on here.

      Just embrace the

  • It doesn't seem like fraud is the actual target. Fiat is used for fraud and I'm willing to wager the dollar amount of fraud is trillions. Just a senior accountants opinion. Feel free to mark as troll /s

  • It's already illegal for a UK bank to allow transfers to such if they cannot identify the end-user.

    Most UK banks won't allow you to do basic transactions to any Bitcoin-related site for this reason. Paypal is a bank in the UK, so their Bitcoin transfers MUST only be to another registered (identified) Paypal user.

    To be honest, I'm pretty certain that they're years behind on it - anti-money-laundering laws basically mean most banks weren't allowing it in the first place.

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