The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), Thailand’s telecom regulator, announced today that mobile banking users can undertake transactions as usual, despite today’s enforcement of a new regulation designed to protect users from scammers.
Under the new rule, the owner of a bank account with mobile banking must be the same person registered as the user of the SIM card, to prevent scammers from using “mule” accounts and “ghost” SIM cards to steal money from bank depositors electronically.
The NBTC explained that it is seeking cooperation from the Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO) and commercial banks to enable it to coordinate with mobile phone service providers, to check the numbers of registered SIM cards which are linked to mobile banking systems.
The information from the mobile service providers, Advanced Info Service (AIS) and TRUE, will then be sent to commercial banks, who will cross check it against their bank accounts with mobile banking. The information will then be passed on to AMLO and the NBTC.
The NBTC said that commercial banks have the discretion, for children whose parents opened accounts with mobile banking for them or for elderly people, to be exempted from the new rule.
The NBTC said, however, that it will hold discussions with mobile phone service providers to help mobile banking users who want to change the registered name of the SIM card owner to match the name of the bank account, to avoid unnecessary inconvenience.
Mobile banking users can check whether their name matches the name of SIM card owner by pressing *179* followed by their ID card number and call.
