Thai people across the country lost almost 100 billion baht to online scams in 2022 through the Prompt Pay platform, claimed Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput, governor of the Bank of Thailand, today.
Speaking at a seminar, named ‘Towards Safer and More Inclusive Digital Finance’, the governor said that, in the past decade, digital finance has developed in leap frog manner, especially digital or fast payment systems, which have completely changed the face of financial transactions and made it easier and more convenient for bank customers to make their payments, citing the Prompt Pay platform.
He disclosed that up to 70% of the Thai population have used Prompt Pay in their daily financial transactions and more than 75 million transactions are conducted each day, with the amount of money transferred via this platform estimated at more than 144 billion baht on daily basis.
He said that this advance in digital finance has opened up new opportunities for people, households and businesses, big and small, to have access to fast payments at lower costs.
He noted, however, that the advanced technology also comes with higher risks from scamming activities, which pose a serious threat globally.
He disclosed that, since 2022, more than one million people have filed complaints with the police, claiming that they were duped out of almost 100 billion baht by online scammers.
To cope with this immediate threat, Sethaput said the central bank has been closely coordinating with the Cybercrime Investigation Bureau and other relevant agencies to update procedures for the freezing and unfreezing of bank accounts suspected to be mule accounts.
He pointed out that authorised push payment fraud has, of late, become widespread, in tandem with the increased use of digital payment systems.
An opinion survey of about 7,000 people shows that 70% have had the experiences of being contacted by online scammers and 30% were duped and lost their money, said the governor.
Once duped by a scammer, he disclosed that the money will be transferred to a mule account in three minutes and most victims discovered the cheating 18 hours after the transaction took place, making it difficult for police to track the money, he said.
The governor also said the central bank and financial institutions have developed the Central Fraud Registry, to link data among financial institutions, including bank, non-bank and digital asset trading centres, and to improve the complaint acceptance system.
