Australian banking group National Australia Bank (NAB) has banned customers from making payments to cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms, calling these transactions high-risk.

Chris Sheehan, head of group investigations and fraud at NAB, said that the main reason for blocking access to digital asset platforms is concerns about fraud. The top manager did not specify which trading platforms the blocking applies to, however, he called operations with crypto assets dangerous.

Australians lost A$221 million (about $151 million) to cryptocurrency scams last year, according to NAB. The bank also cited data from an Australian organization investigating financial crimes: over the past 30 days, almost 50% of fraud cases were related to cryptocurrencies.

“We are increasingly seeing how international criminal groups use crypto platforms to quickly move stolen funds abroad,” said a top manager at the National Bank of Australia.

Previously, another large Australian bank, Westpac Banking, restricted clients’ access to cryptocurrencies, which banned clients from opening deposits on the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance. In June, Commonwealth Bank set a limit on deposits on crypto exchanges to protect customers from possible losses. In the same month, the Australian and New Zealand banking group ANZ announced that they would not add support for cryptocurrencies.

This year, the National Bank of Australia successfully completed an international transaction using the Australian dollar-pegged stablecoin AUDN and recognized its potential in the payment industry.