Every banking platform has an “important” duty to combat financial crime, and N26 claims that it is “no different.”
As a fully-regulated bank, this is “not just a responsibility, but a legal requirement for [them] to do so,” the N26 team noted in a blog post.
At N26, they claim to “take this extremely seriously, as it most crucially helps keep the funds held in your N26 account safe and secure.”
They do this “in a number of ways, using automated systems, specialized teams and machine learning to monitor for activity within [their] base.”
N26 further noted that they regularly conduct routine checks on their millions of customer accounts “to detect suspicious activity or misuse of accounts, which allow [them] to monitor and flag suspicious activity or misuse where it may exist.”
As clarified in the update, N26 is required by law “to report any suspicious activity [they] find to the German Financial Intelligence Unit by filing a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR).”
This is because they hold “a full German banking license, and are governed by Germany’s Money Laundering Act, which outlines clear requirements for all banks to report all potentially fraudulent or criminal activity.”
Sometimes, their findings may require them “to block accounts.” They always aim “to return any customer funds as soon as possible as long as these can be released.”
Their teams will always strive “to minimize any disruption while following the processes required of us.”
Unfortunately, during this period, their customer service teams “are prohibited from sharing information on the account in question – even to the account holder themselves.”
This is because banks can “only disclose why an account may be blocked or closed to the relevant authorities.”
While it is understandably frustrating, this legal requirement has “a practical reason – to prevent cybercriminals from being tipped off on the nature of the investigation while law enforcement officials do their work, and to stop fraudsters from using this information to evade detection in future.”
On occasion, N26 acknowledges that they may “wrongly identify a legitimate customer as a potential fraudster, as the evidence found by [their] anti-financial crime teams may not be absolutely clear.”
Sometimes, they may require more information “to make a fuller assessment, and will reach out to request this.”
In many cases, they have “to make a decision and judgement based on the information [they] have.”
The company also mentioned:
“While it isn’t possible to get this right 100% of the time, our teams will strive to help customers resolve these cases as quickly as possible, and will continue to dedicate their time and efforts einto assessing each case to ensure we minimize the margin for error, while doing all that we have to to combat crime.”
They added that as “the face of financial crime and online fraud is constantly evolving, N26 is continuing to invest even more in [their] efforts to fight online fraud and financial crime in the digital space, so that [they] can keep updating [their] systems to detect suspicious activity online, even as people’s habits evolve.”