Malaysian banks block up to RM644 million in scam transfers since 2023

Chong Chieng Jen

By DayakDaily Team

KUCHING, Oct 28: The new ‘kill switch’ and other authentication mechanisms introduced by Malaysian banks since 2023 have successfully blocked the transfer of RM644 million in suspicious transactions or scams.

In 2023, RM383 million suspicious online transfers of funds were blocked and in 2024 up to August, RM261 million online transfers of funds were blocked.

Stampin MP Chong Chieng Jen said the abovementioned data was the reply he received in Parliament this morning on his question to the Minister of Finance Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim about the effect of ‘kill switch’ and OTP replacement mechanism for online transfers and banking transactions.

Total losses due to online fraud for the years 2023 and 2024 (Jan-Sept).

In the reply, Chong said it was also stated that after the implementation of these new features for online transfers, there was an obvious drop in bank scams via phishing and malware.

However, while the phishing and malware scams have decreased, investment scams have increased significantly from RM472,156,391 last year (2023) to RM547,276,217 as of September this year (2024).

“It is also very worrying that overall, online scams and fraud have caused more losses in 2024 compared to the year 2023, with the bulk of the losses due to telecommunication fraud and investment scams.

“With these statistics, the Government should take the appropriate action to curb these activities,” he said in a statement today.

Chong emphasised that all scams involve the use of mule bank accounts to facilitate fund transfers and thus, urged the Federal government to take strict action against banks that allow these accounts to operate.

He noted that while banks can detect mule accounts, the costs associated with these investigations deter them from doing so.

“At the moment, as banks can wash their hands clear of all liabilities for such scams, there is thus no incentive for banks to launch a massive operation to clean up and clear their customers and their accounts.

“It is thus a matter of passing the costs to the customers and consumers by pushing all such losses to the consumers.

“Therefore, if the government truly has the intention to combat these online frauds and not merely paying lip service only, the Government should pass the law to make banking institutes liable, if not wholly at least partially for the losses on the ground that banks allow mule accounts to operate,” he added. — DayakDaily