Nationwide Building Society is keeping an eye on activities involving virtual currencies and is taking additional precautions.
The British financial institution thinks reviewing its digital asset policies will help in protecting clients from scams and frauds. Nationwide will also block suspicious transactions and will provide customized scam warnings for those engaging with such payments.
Nationwide isn’t the only bank in the UK reevaluating its attitude towards the virtual currency industry. NatWest has temporarily limited the amount of money its customers can spend on virtual currencies. The bank is concerned about scams and illegitimate transactions. NatWest will also block transactions towards exchanges that were in some way related to fraudulent activity.
“To protect our customers from the criminals exploiting these platforms, we’re temporarily reducing the maximum daily amount that a customer can send to cryptocurrency exchanges as well as blocking payments to a small number of cryptocurrency asset firms where we have seen particularly significant levels of fraud-related harm for our customers.”
NatWest spokeman
Barclays also began to block its clients from using their payment cards to purchase digital assets from Binance. Banks are trying to protect their customers while the number of people holding digital assets is growing rapidly in the United Kingdom. Over 10 million individuals own crypto in 2021 until now. The number has increased by 558% since 2018.
According to a new policy, Google will also not cover ads related to digital currencies, gambling, debt, and similar services. Starting from August 30, the search engine will only show ads of the companies registered by the UK regulator (FCA) or those that qualify for one of the limited exemptions.
“We want to see continued and concerted efforts by all organisations with an interest in protecting consumers to achieve a sustained reduction in scams. While this is an important step from Google we think a permanent and consistent solution requires legislation.”
The FCA
