Starling Bank Reminds Customers It Is Cracking Down on Crypto

Months after announcing it would steer away from digital assets, United Kingdom neobank Starling Bank has increased its anti-cryptocurrency campaign.

In a statement to PYMNTS Wednesday (Nov. 23), the bank said it has had restrictions of varying degrees on cryptocurrency transactions for some time, as do many banks.

“We recently tightened restrictions on inbound and outbound transactions by card and bank transfer,” according to the statement. “Today’s message was to make sure that customers who have made such transactions in the past, but not recently, are aware of this.”

Starling went on to say cryptocurrencies have many potential advantages, but for now, “they are high risk and heavily used for criminal purposes and, as such, we no longer support them.”

Speaking at a conference in June, Starling Bank CEO Anne Boden said her industry is “in a very dangerous phase” when describing the increased fraud exposure due to crypto.

It’s a reason the bank has so far steered away from digital assets, she said, instead focusing on protecting unsuspecting customers from increasing scam risks, particularly in countries where crypto wallets are directly connected to real-time payment schemes.

“We’re spending far more of our time protecting customers from [crypto] scammers than we are trying to promote crypto,” Boden told the audience.

She added that European banks need to impose far tougher know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML) and onboarding procedures to curtail the growing trend.

“Our AML and our onboarding processes are as good as the weakest link, and I think some of these organizations are the weakest link,” she said.

This month’s crypto market shakeup, triggered by the collapse of the FTX exchange, has seen banking officials stress the need for crypto regulations.

Last week saw Mark Branson, member of the supervisory board of the European Central Bank (ECB) and president of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), warn that regulation will prevent crypto market volatility from spilling over into the financial sector.

“Not all crypto business models are serious,” he said, adding that “waves of innovation, as we know, also bring with them freeloaders and crooks.”

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