A bank or e-wallet may be ordered to repay a customer’s losses from an account scam when its own non-compliance caused the loss, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on July 23, 2026. The Philippine National Police has filed more than 500 cases under the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA), Republic Act No. 12010.
BSP General Counsel Roberto Figueroa, quoted by GMA News, said such an order can extend to “full restitution” of the amount the depositor lost, even where the bank itself is not the scammer. Complaints of up to ₱10 million can be adjudicated by the BSP.
The deadline for institutions to upgrade their fraud management systems and to limit authentication that can be intercepted, such as SMS one-time passwords, was June 25, 2026. It is set by AFASA’s implementing circulars 1213 to 1215, published in the BSP’s AFASA booklet with the implementing rules.
The day before, on July 22, the BSP said it had signed an information-sharing agreement with the Department of Justice. Under the procedures it establishes, the DOJ Office of Cybercrime can request and receive financial account information from the BSP’s Consumer Account Protection Office, in accordance with AFASA and BSP Circular No. 1214. That gives investigators a direct route to the account details behind a reported scam.
