High value transfers should be subject to additional scrutiny to confirm it’s legitimate.
The hard part is making sure you balance that well enough so that you’re protecting against malaise without the bank then becoming a consumer problem themselves.
It will be interesting to see how well this works.
Couldn't find anything that indicated there was a mass freezing of legitimate accounts, or a singular complaint of an incident of that happening.
* Can't copy paste...is the article an image!?
I can't check right now, but I'm guessing they set `user-select: none` in CSS.
In fact the last thing you want to do is give criminals warning that you’re going to freeze their accounts. I’d imagine that would be extremely counterproductive for everyone bar those criminals.
Which to me seems entirely reasonable limit. Such transactions are relatively rare.
That’s mostly annoying for inter accounts movement if you move money around a bit but I think you would get higher capacity if you are concerned.
Wikipedia does recognise ‘m’ as an abbreviation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000
It’s definitely open to confusion but generally if you already known that abbreviation exists then one can usually deduce how to interpret that abbreviation from the context of the sentence. In this case, it’s a financial headline so I assumed it was “million”.
The lower-case m is used in British English. Upper case M can be used, but it’s unnecessarily ambiguous and close to wrong in American English.
So many questions...
Update: my Thai friend just wrote me this:
"Not in trouble, it's the Chinese and Russians money laundering. Every Russian has had their accounts suspended, this was about half a year ago, now they are slowly doing the Chinese and Brits too. Vietnam is not much better, also suspending all foreigners accounts until you can prove you have a trc here."
Update2: just saw this on IG… https://www.instagram.com/p/DOZM0ZOkUAy/
Fraud has always been around, but I think a few recent developments have exacerbated the problem. KYC has been relaxed a lot since Covid, so you can open a whole bunch of accounts with just an image of an ID card. Lots of elderly people now have access to mobile banking, so they don't have to visit a physical branch where a clerk can flag suspicious transfer requests.
Bank accounts in South Korea now start with a daily transfer limit of 1 million won (about $700), even lower than the 50k bhat limit that the Thai government has instituted.
KK Park – a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres) along the churning Moei River that forms Myanmar’s border with Thailand.. with its on-site hospital, restaurants, bank and neat lines of villas with manicured lawns, looks more like the campus of a Silicon Valley tech company than what it really is: the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence.. Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits.They pay a low-income/no-income person a small fee (possibly monthly) to let them borrow their account. Sadly, people who would fall into this are not hard to find in Thailand.
> What sort of KYC was going on?
There are accounts that are grandfathered in and don’t require KYC but have been able to access online banking, etc. Mine is such, and my bank (BAY) is discontinuing that particular loophole at the end of this month. (I'm in Thailand right now to do this KYC, despite having not come back here for the last 6 years.)
(ETA: HN title has been re-edited, previously didn't have the "to curb fraud" clause.)
If you have a better suggestion for an abridged headline then you could share and hopefully the submitter can still update this submission.
Even if the anti-fraud motif is genuine, that’s a pretty extreme amount of control. Not that it’s in any way strange coming from Thailand. Foreign exchange and capital inflow and outflow are already controlled.
> Bank of Thailand (BOT) will meet with commercial banks and the Anti-Online Scam Operations Centre (AOC) on Monday to address growing complaints about the wrongful freezing of bank accounts.. after small retailers and individuals reported being abruptly cut off from their funds without warning or recourse.. Assistant BOT Governor.. acknowledged that current procedures for identifying and freezing suspected “mule accounts” need refinement to prevent harming innocent customers. Many account holders have taken to social media to express frustration over being unable to access their money or conduct business after transfers from unknown sources triggered automated freezes.
this wasn't a swift action overnight
they could be blocking this many accounts on a yearly basis just from scam reports at the police station
or more which seems to be the case recently, but not overnight
this is bad article
As emergency measures usually are.
Tourism is a significant portion of the economy, but not overwhelming [0].
Tourists and "expats" in Thailand overstate their importance in the country. Some bogan who wants to get drunk on Songsom and spend maybe $100-300/mo isn't moving the needle economically for Thailand.
Japanese and Korean expats (as in those actually brought in by Japanese and Korean companies as part of the FTA to transfer expertise) are a different story.
Thailand has been an industrial country for decades now. Most of your car parts (and even cars) in Australia, a portion of global semiconductors, oil refining, polymers, and other intermediate parts have been manufactured, assembled, or packaged in Thailand for decades.
[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/764/export-basket
???
The abbreviation “M” for million can lead to confusion in finance. Historically, “M” derives from the Latin word “mille,” meaning “thousand.” As such, it has traditionally been used in some accounting or construction contexts to denote a thousand. For example, $5M could historically represent $5,000, creating ambiguity.
To represent one million in finance, the abbreviation “MM” is widely used. This notation originates from “mille mille,” meaning “thousand thousands” in Latin, equating to one million. This clarity makes “MM” a preferred choice in financial statements and reports.
Other abbreviations for million, such as “mn” or “mln,” are also encountered.. The Financial Times, for example, adopted “mn” for millions to improve accessibility for text-to-speech software. While these alternatives exist, “MM” remains a prevalent and widely understood abbreviation for million in American finance.The Wikipedia on long and short scales[1][2] for the root of the problem.
It is a very confusing way to write the number and no explanation seems to fit, other than "There is a second 'M' to avoid clash with the company name '3M'.". Is that the explanation?
To represent one million in finance, the abbreviation “MM” is widely used. This notation originates from “mille mille,” meaning “thousand thousands” in Latin, equating to one million. This clarity makes “MM” a preferred choice in financial statements and reports.
mlinhares•1h ago
Its sad that these scams are so widespread today that a heavy handed approach like this is necessary. Unfortunately doing these attacks is incredibly cheap :(
esafak•1h ago
dlisboa•38m ago
It’s also a different kind of enemy. The biggest crime organization in Brazil has switched their primary focus from drug running to financial scams. They invest millions and set up legitimate companies with hundreds of employees to facilitate these schemes.
kattagarian•58m ago
dkga•48m ago
catlikesshrimp•44m ago
The final solution was disabling the ATM network durimg night, except the ones located in safe places. Showing you are drawing money in a hurry in a lone hut in the night was a bad idea, anyways.
jajko•34m ago