Customers in the United Kingdom are no longer able to buy cryptocurrency assets through Chase UK, JPMorgan’s British challenger bank brand.
According to a statement released by the firm on Tuesday, Chase UK clients will no longer be able to purchase cryptocurrency using a debit card or an outbound bank transfer as of October 16.
If customers make an effort to conduct a transaction involving cryptocurrency, they will be informed that the transaction has been refused, the bank stated in an email to customers.
This has been done to safeguard our clients’ money and to keep them safe.
The business claimed that it was taking this action because scammers are increasingly exploiting crypto assets to defraud consumers out of substantial quantities of money.
Data from Action Fraud, the UK’s fraud reporting agency, was used by Chase UK to demonstrate that customer losses to cryptocurrency fraud surged by over 40% in the previous year and now exceed £300 million for the first time.
According to the Office for National Statistics, over 40% of all recorded offences in England and Wales last year involved cryptocurrency frauds, Chase UK stated in the client email.
Chase UK is the most recent bank in the nation to take action to restrict its clients’ access to buy cryptocurrency.
In an effort to combat the increase in cryptocurrency-related fraud efforts, NatWest placed restrictions on its customers, limiting their ability to send to crypto exchanges a maximum of £1,000 per day and £5,000 over the course of 30 days.
Similar limitations on cryptocurrency-related purchases have been established by HSBC and Nationwide.
An email from a Chase representative on Tuesday read that they are committed to helping keep their money safe and secure.
They decided to forbid customers from buying cryptocurrencies using its Chase debit cards or by transferring funds from a Chase accounts to cryptocurrency websites since they have observed a spike in the amount of crypto scams that target consumers in the United Kingdom.
