City’s financial watchdog launched a new public awareness campaign to combat rising scams, which defrauded residents of billions of dollars.
HKMA’s campaign uses a “despicable banana” character to highlight the rise in scams in Hong Kong, urging residents to be vigilant and banks to enhance security. Image: HKMAThe Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has teamed up with banks to launch a public awareness campaign aimed at combating the rising scams that have defrauded the city’s residents of billions of dollars.
The HKMA released the first video in the series titled “Click the Links, Fall for Scams!”
The video features a “despicable banana”, a seemingly harmless character that reveals its true, greedy nature once its victims are hooked. The pronunciation of banana in Cantonese is the same as the word for falling into the traps of scammers.
Over the next three weeks, the regulator will release two more episodes on its social media platforms.
Last year, more than 44,000 scam cases were recorded, according to statistics released by the police department.
Although the number of scam cases last year increased at a slower pace at around 12 per cent, compared with more than 40 per cent in 2023, the amount involved reached a whopping HK$9.15 billion (US$1.2 billion).
“While the number of scam cases is accelerating at a slower pace, new tactics are emerging all the time,” the HKMA said in a statement.
Protect yourself from fake messages that seem like official Hong Kong bodies
A fake customer service phone scam, which started making the rounds last year, racked up 5,575 cases in 2024, according to police data shared by the HKMA.
The number of investment scams reached 4,753, a decline of 25 per cent from 2023. Employment scams accounted for 4,083 cases last year, up 3.9 per cent from the previous year.
Even mainland Chinese residents in the city were not spared. Some 320 mainland students studying in Hong Kong were defrauded of more than HK$230 million, the HKMA said.
Last month, the HKMA made it incumbent on banks to conduct a mandatory name-matching process on customers for real-time fund transfers to tackle scams.
For transactions exceeding HK$1,000 or other currencies of an equivalent amount, banks are now required to check customers’ names in real time. The banks have until the end of May to comply with the measure.
The HKMA previously required banks to conduct the mandatory name-matching process on real-time fund transfers for amounts of HK$10,000 and above.
Transfer instructions that do not pass the mandatory name-matching process will be rejected by the payee institutions, and banks will be required to inform the customer.
The government has been implementing steps to protect Hongkongers from the rising number of frauds and scams. In September, HKMA said it would introduce a framework on scams, paving the way for commercial banks to share losses with customers affected by such transactions.
In December, the de facto central bank said Hongkongers could lock all or part of their bank account balances in a “Money Safe” option to protect their savings.