BC to announce change in online account opening to curb oranges

The president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, stated that the monetary authority is studying changes in rules for opening accounts at fintechs and digital banks to curb so-called orange accounts, which are rented or lent to criminals and scammers.

According to him, the BC is in the “process of redoing some of the regulations”. “Large banks have a know your client system [conheça seu cliente] and account opening is much more complex than platform banks. It costs more, it’s slower, but it’s safer for the customer,” he said at an event held by Grupo Parlatório this Friday (19).

“We see that there are a number of orange accounts that are opened, which are more related to these platforms where the opening process is easier. We have no conclusions, we are looking into this and we should take action on this soon” , he added.

He highlighted, however, that the BC does not intend to return to the model of opening a face-to-face account.

“We would not like to go back to that system of opening accounts in person, which needs to look at a photo. The world of digitization is a step forward,” he said.

Since the launch of Pix in November of last year, criminals have taken advantage of the ease and speed of the instant payment system to apply scams or to ask the victim to transfer large amounts during robberies or kidnappings.

Bandits often use so-called orange bills, which are rented or borrowed, to receive the money, in addition to spreading it to others, which makes it difficult for the police to track down the amounts and dismantle the gangs.

To increase security in operations with Pix, BC announced a series of changes in the payment system’s rules, such as the limit of R$1,000 between 8:00 pm and 6:00 am, which began to apply on October 4th.

On Pix’s birthday, last Tuesday (16), the system started counting other security measures. The special return mechanism began to apply, which allows the bank to revert amounts to the payer’s account in cases of fraud or operational failure.

The return of funds can be requested either by the institution of the recipient or by the payer.

According to the autarchy, the objective is to accelerate the reversal process when there is fraud and/or failure. The transaction will appear in the statement of transactions.

In addition, the possibility for the bank to retain a suspicious operation on Pix for up to 72 hours for analysis and the mandatory notification of infringement, which was previously optional, also come into effect this Tuesday.

The notification works as a mark on the Pix key made by the bank, on the user’s CPF or CNPJ and on the account number, when fraud is found. This information will be shared with other institutions whenever there is a consultation. With that, the BC hopes that the orange accounts can be identified.

Campos Neto also stated that the BC is studying other regulatory changes to match fintechs and larger banks. “Some fintechs are bank-sized but have no proportional capital requirement […] we have been doing the adjustment exercise and we are working on something”, he pointed out.