Prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has expressed support for a policy that puts more responsibility on banks to protect account holders from scams. In parliament, he said that Malaysia should follow the United Kingdom’s new policy where account holders have the right to get reimbursed for money lost to scammers.
Anwar stated that he agrees that the refund principle should be applied here, but that it was still being studied by a committee chaired by the Treasury secretary-general. He added that they are also studying on tightening the law so that banks will be held responsible if they are found to be careless in monitoring and ensuring compliance of every rule.
The UK policy in question came into effect in October, which requires payment service providers to reimburse their customers who fall victim to authorised push payment fraud. The policy requires banks to refund up to GBP85,000 (~RM480,950) to scam victims within five days.
Earlier this year, digital minister Gobind Singh revealed that Malaysians lost a total of RM3.18 billion to online scams involving more than 95,800 victims between 2021 and April 2024. The prime minister also disclosed that the police’s Semak Mule database, which contains known numbers and bank accounts of scammers, now contains over 181,000 phone numbers and over 222,000 bank accounts.
(Source: Malaysiakini)
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