Measures Against Pix’s ‘clean it up’ Scam are being developed. The Brazilian Central Bank (BC) and financial institutions are working to increase the efficiency of the special Pix return mechanism and thus make it difficult for criminals to move money from victims of scams and robberies. Through many methods, criminals have been managing to access to the victim’s bank account – particularly using the cell phone –, and disperse the money in different accounts, complicating the blocking and recovery of funds. To make the practice more difficult, the BC will adopt two new barriers:
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First Barrier
Today, the victim of a scam notifies their bank, which uses Pix’s infrastructure to block the resource on the target account. The idea now is to freeze transactions for up to five subsequent accounts to which that money was transferred for a period.
Second Barrier
Another measure is the creation of “labels” to identify types of fraud, such as identity fraud and money laundering. Accounts belonging to suspected citizens and companies would receive these markings in the database operated by the Central Bank.
Other Changes
Other changes involve the end of mandatory night limits per transaction via Pix –considered ineffective– and a self-assessment questionnaire filled in by institutions.
Importance
The system that allows the bank to reverse amounts to the payer’s account in cases of fraud or operational failure only recovers 5% of the funds.
One Year
As there is a complexity to make the new tool work, the novelty should take at least a year to reach all users.
