Since January 1, updated criteria for detecting fraudulent transactions will come into force in Russia, on the basis of which banks will be able to suspend transfers until the circumstances are clarified. The number of official signs has been increased from six to twelve, which significantly expands the tools of financial organizations in the fight against embezzlement.
The new rules are aimed at curbing the most common schemes in which money is first accumulated in one account and then transferred to third parties. One of the key new features is the transfer of funds to a recipient with whom the client has not had any contact in the last six months, if before that, during the day, a transfer was made to himself from another bank through the SBP in the amount of over 200 thousand rubles.
Another risk factor is considered to be a change in the client's contact information shortly before the transfer. If the online banking or government services portal phone number was changed two days before the transaction, the bank receives grounds to recognize the transaction as suspicious. Additionally, technical parameters are taken into account: the presence of malicious software, changes to the device's operating system or Internet service provider.
Financial organizations have previously focused on such signals, but since the new year they have received a regulatory basis for their application. Alexander Timofeev, Director of Financial Markets and Macroeconomics Analysis at F-Broker, emphasizes:
"The formal signs that have now been published were in banking practice before that. But banks often faced a problem when customers, realizing that this was still a recommendation and not some kind of law, directly insisted on these actions, even if the bank understood that, in general, something was going wrong."
According to him, the regulator has actually legalized the existing protection mechanisms.:
"Therefore, I would not say that something new has appeared, the Central Bank has simply legitimized the practices that existed before. There is nothing excessive behind these practices."
The list of new signs also includes attempts to deposit cash through an ATM using a digital card on a smartphone if the client made a foreign transfer in the amount of more than 100 thousand rubles during the previous 24 hours. A signal from the National Payment Card System or the presence of the recipient of funds in the state anti-corruption system may also be the basis for blocking.
The expansion of control already leads to ambiguous situations. Maxim, a Muscovite, was faced with the blocking of a transfer to a contractor for repairs:
"I was transferring money to the foreman for repairs, 250 thousand... The bank blocked the transfer and the call came: "Do you know this person?"... and at the same time, my MTS Defender says that I may be talking to a fraudster."
Experts warn that excessive application of the new criteria may increase the burden on banks' customer service and lead to an outflow of some users. At the same time, the regulator has already demonstrated its willingness to adjust approaches — control over operations with cryptocurrencies was previously relaxed and a rehabilitation mechanism was introduced for mistakenly blocked clients.
