Thai emergency decree on cybercrime inspired by Singaporean guidelines

Thailand’s emergency decree for tackling cybercrime was adapted from Singapore’s guidelines that placed the responsibility for losses incurred by victims on financial institutions and telecommunication operators.

Bank of Thailand (BOT) deputy governor of financial institutions stability Roong Mallikamas told a media briefing on January 30 that the central bank agreed with this emergency decree, which came into effect in February.

She explained that Singapore’s guidelines stipulated that sectors should respond whether they are the cause of phishing or unauthorised payment fraud or not.The guidelines also stipulated that financial institutions should send messages to warn customers about abnormalities in their bank account, such as cash withdrawal, change of mobile phones, and disable any transactions with high risk of scamming.

Telecommunication operators, meanwhile, should block SMS from unauthorised aggregators, as well as SMS with malicious URLs, she explained.

She added that customers should be aware of risk from malicious links contained in SMS and emails, and they should be responsible if banks and telecom operators inform them of the risk of scamming.

“All sectors, both service providers and users, banks, telecom operators and regulators, have a duty,” she said. 

She added that Thailand would limit cash transfer to lower than Singapore’s 50,000 Singaporean dollars (1.2 million baht) in order to prevent damage.Kitti Kosavisutte, chairman of Thailand Banking-Computer Emergency Response Team (TB-CERT), told Thansettakij media on Friday that the BOT and relevant agencies were working proactively to disrupt scammers’ activities, especially mule accounts.

“Overall, we can see that these threats have been mitigated compared to before, as we had suffered losses due to cybercrimes,” he said.

A source from the financial institution expects agencies will join forces in dealing with cybercrimes, such as Line, Facebook and other electronic payment operators.

(2025/02/14-00:00)