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"Need more help?" says the PayPal page. Another quality control failure....

In or about 2003, I closed our publishing company's account with PayPal because they kept blocking the account. At the time, PayPal wasn't the enormous global powerhouse that it has become. It was, essentially, a bunch of nerds for whom compliance and risk management was a nuisance. When electronic money started to exercise the US government's collective mind, PayPal found that it needed some risk management processes. They didn't do it properly. Then, later, when PayPal expanded into Europe, it migrated our account to its EU operations and put money laundering, etc. risk and compliance in Dublin where they set up systems that were not only rubbish but sent out letters referring to non-existent legislation. But now, a piece of essential third party produced software is pushing us towards at least opening, even if we don't use it, a PayPal account. How hard can it be? Surely they have learned something in...

There is a long line of failures to properly plan before implementation - and of fundamental failure to understand the basics of a business or issue before launching a system.

We need to stand back, to take stock. We need to rethink our entire approach to management especially risk management. It's time to get back to basics.

Arthur Yuen, Deputy Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, today set out Hong Kong's stall. Is today's statement an indication of success or a note being of not-quite competitive?

The extraordinary case of an elderly man who was forced into expensive legal proceedings to recover almost GBP200,000 accidentally paid into the wrong bank account could have been so easily avoided if UK banks operated, under the auspices of regulators, a simple cross-check of information. It happens elsewhere.

Washington 5 December 2019 – Today the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took action against Evil Corp, the Russia-based cybercriminal organization responsible for the development and distribution of the Dridex malware.

The trouble with looking for transactions ‘consistent’ with ‘known’ patterns ‘indicative’ of child exploitation payments to countries with ‘known’ risks is that countless legitimate payments exhibit similar features, says Dr Ron Pol of AML Assurance and La Trobe University.

AUSTRAC, Australia’s anti money-laundering and terrorism financing regulator, has today applied to the Federal Court of Australia for civil penalty orders against Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac).

The civil penalty orders relate to systemic non-compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act). AUSTRAC alleges Westpac contravened the AML/CTF Act on over 23 million occasions.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has issued a warning about a fraudulent website.

Sorry, idiot. If you are going to try to scam us, at least don't make it clear right from the outset that it's a fraud.

A financial adviser has closed its "artificial intelligence" driven advisory system. The quality of advice and the supervision of the system were both causes for concern by the regulator in a landmark case about the deployment of computer-driven, what used to be called "expert", systems with implications across the entire spectrum of financial and other services including customer due diligence in relation to financial crime risk management. It's a potential game-changer for the rapid rise of lightly regulated fintechs.

A notice published on the website of Standard Chartered Bank, Malaysia, says that moneys that have until now been covered by the Central Bank's deposit guarantee scheme are no longer so covered. Especially surprising is the formal distinguishing between Mainland and Labuan bank accounts.

The Takata airbag scandal raises important questions for insurers in this and other cases of recall. And how Big Data can be used for good.

An article published by CNBC ("Here’s why regulators are so worried about Facebook’s digital currency") says in its teaser "Facebook’s argument is that it won’t be minting new money with its digital currency."

That is absolutely untrue. This is why.

Yesterday, it was reported that a former branch manager with National Australia Bank had been convicted of fraud and that other prosecutions were in the pipeline. Today, ASIC, the Australian financial regulator, has said that it has issued proceedings against the bank. Is it a coincidence? One thinks not.