NBU cannot measure number of "drops" and volume of their abuse

The National Bank cannot measure the number of "drops" and the volume of their abuse.

Andrii Kotiuzhynskyi, director of the Department of Integrated Banking Supervision, announced this in the "Chronicles of the Economy" podcast, the Ukrainian News agency reports.

"We cannot measure the volume of abuse, unfortunately or fortunately. But in general, we consider the restrictions to be quite effective," he said.

At the same time, Kotiuzhynskyi reported that no matter how many times the NBU tried to go through the chain of "drops", which is quite difficult, with all its knees, the regulator did not find large "wallets" with large funds.

Answering the question of why the restrictions were introduced in October last year, the representative of the regulator replied that over the summer the NBU saw separate "waves" that used acquiring in other jurisdictions.

"We had a lot of payments in favor of African countries, Latin America and China. We communicated separately with the market so that they would adjust their monitoring system and block such terminals. When this scheme lost its effectiveness over the summer, by the fall we saw a massive organization of the drop scheme," said Andrii Kotiuzhynskyi.

At the same time, violation of the memorandum by banks will lead to a regulatory dialogue with the National Bank, although it may not threaten large fines for banks.

Drops are people who, for a reward, provide attackers with access to their bank cards and accounts. Such payment instruments are used as transit for transfers of various amounts between other accounts.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, the National Bank of Ukraine has decided not to extend the regulatory restrictions of UAH 150,000 per month for outgoing transfers (also known as P2P, C2C) on all accounts of individual customers opened in one bank to the accounts of other individuals.

In December 2024, Ukrainian banks, under the coordination of banking associations, signed a Memorandum on ensuring transparency in the functioning of the payment services market.

The signatories of the Memorandum undertake to carry out customer transfers taking into account the implemented risk-based approach.

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