Santander UK Bank Puts Monthly Limit On Transactions To Crypto Exchanges

Santander UK has put a per transaction limit as well as a total monthly restriction on the amount that users can transfer to crypto exchanges.

Santander UK Bank Says Investing In Crypto Can Be High Risk

The United Kingdom branch of the banking giant Banco Santander yesterday posted a notification for its customers, where it alerted users that investing in crypto assets can be high risk.

“In recent months we’ve seen a large increase in UK customers become victims of cryptocurrency fraud,” notes the bank.

Santander UK further explains, “the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has warned consumers about the risks of investing in crypto assets as money held in customers’ crypto wallets is unlikely to be protected by the Financial Ombudsman Service and Financial Services Compensation Scheme if something goes wrong.”

As a way to protect its customers, the bank has decided that the best way to do so is by limiting transfers to cryptocurrency exchanges.

Starting 15th Nov, users of Santander UK mobile and online banking will have a limit of £1,000 (around $1,129) per transaction for transfers going to these exchanges.

Additionally, the customers will also have a monthly total limit of £3,000 (about $3,386) that will apply on any rolling 30-day period.

Users can still, however, transfer money from exchanges to their Santander UK bank accounts without any restrictions.

The lender also notes that it will continue to block transactions going to Binance. This restriction is because of the warning FCA posted last year, saying that the cryptocurrency exchange is unpermitted to undertake any regulated activity in the nation.

Though, customers are still free to withdraw their money from Binance into their Santander UK bank accounts.

“We’ll be making more changes to limit or prevent payments to crypto exchanges in the future, though we’ll always let you know before we make these changes,” communicates Santander.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $20.8k, up 2% in the last week. Over the past month, the crypto has gained 6% in value.

Below is a chart that shows the trend in the price of the coin over the last five days.

The value of the coin seems to have sharply surged up over the last twenty-four hours or so | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Bitcoin has fallen back to consolidation in the past week as the coin has been mostly trading sideways around $20.5k. Nonetheless, however, the coin has still held strongly above $20k, something that investors would be happy about.

Featured image from Traxer on Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com