Binance Australia is reportedly employing a tighter grasp on its onboarding process for new users as, included in the scope of a push for enhanced users protection flagged as most vulnerable to financial crypto crime.

Specifically, the updated measures reportedly surfaced during Binance Australia’s June quarter Economic, Social, and Governance (ESG) report on Aug. 29, which revealed that the exchange was investing resources in a “stringent and user-focused onboarding experience” targeting at groups with a higher occurrence of financial crime.

Head of Binance Aus Leigh Travers and Zachary Lu from the exchange’s Financial Crime, Risk and Compliance unit, additionally shared that the firm has been showing an active stance towards studying measures to protect “vulnerable users” – which begins from the onboarding process.

“From the whole financial management perspective, we are really looking at it from end to end and also from a whole life circle’s perspective. “We are looking at three main areas: onboarding, ongoing and at the end of the life cycle [the point of time in which someone is scammed].”

Lu reportedly clarified that the general type of individuals falling within Binance’s categoty of vulnerable users are the elderly, people dwelling in remote areas, or those with disabilities. That kind of conclusions were the outcome of collaborating with numerous government and research agencies concetrating on financial crime. 

The duo highlighted that the firm is shifting a specific concentration towards investment scams, where criminals promise inordinate returns on investments to trick victims into transferring them funds.

This kind of scam has reportedly resulted in millions equivalent of financial damage in crypto for people in Australia, with a recent report from Scamwatch generating estimations of $25 million hemorrhaged in the first six months of last year because of bogus investment schemes.

“There are 500 different scams, but investment scams are always on the top of it. So this is not exclusive to crypto scams to be honest, but investment scams overall ranked number one for a long, long time,” Lu noted.