Leading Australian bank National Australia Bank (NAB) has announced that it has blocked some payments to cryptocurrency exchanges.
The increase in the use and popularity of Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies has also prompted criminals to enter the cryptocurrency space and led to an increase in fraud cases.
This has prompted countries and institutions to take a cautious and prohibitive approach to the cryptocurrency industry.
At this point, the final move came from the Bank of Australia.
Growing scrutiny of the crypto industry by Australian authorities has led banks to take tough action on working with cryptocurrency exchanges and companies.
According to Bloomberg, National Australia Bank (NAB), one of Australia's leading banks, has decided to restrict access to cryptocurrency platforms due to the risks posed by fraud incidents and announced that it will block payments to high-risk cryptocurrency exchanges.
With this move, NAB joins other major Australian banks including Westpac, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.
NAB head of fraud Chris Sheehan said in a statement:
“Crypto scammers are part of an organized international criminal group.
Increasingly, we are seeing them use cryptocurrency platforms to send stolen funds abroad quickly and frequently.
This has prompted us to take action against cryptocurrency exchanges because we found that nearly 50% of the fraudulent funds reported to financial crime exchanges in Australia in the past 30 days were related to cryptocurrency.”
