Finance
Georgia's Central Bank Sets 48-Hour Freeze on Suspicious Transfers by Over-60s
September 2, 2026
3
Min
The National Bank of Georgia has clarified the scope of a new anti-fraud rule that allows banks to suspend electronic transfers made by customers over 60, saying the measure applies only to transactions a provider already suspects are linked to fraud and will not touch routine payments.
Under the regulation, a bank or payment service provider may hold an electronic transfer for 48 hours, but only when four conditions are met simultaneously, according to the central bank's explanation reported by JAMnews.
The four conditions
All of the following must apply before a payment can be paused: the customer must be over 60; the transfer must exceed 500 lari; the bank or payment organisation must detect unusual spending or behaviour by that customer; and the payment must involve activity carrying a high risk of fraud.
Age and amount alone are not sufficient. The central bank gave the example of a 65-year-old who pays 700 lari in utility bills each month or regularly transfers money to a family member: those transactions would not be automatically suspended, because the behavioural and risk conditions are not met.
The picture changes if the same customer is suddenly asked to send a large sum to an unfamiliar account and their behaviour inside the banking system looks anomalous. In that case the protection mechanism may trigger.
What the bank must do during the pause
Once a transaction is held, the provider is required to contact the customer, explain in plain terms why the payment looks suspicious, and set out the risks involved. The final decision then returns to the customer. If they still want the money to move, they confirm it to the bank and the transfer proceeds.
This is the design point that distinguishes the rule from a prohibition. Nobody over 60 is barred from making transfers; the regulation inserts a mandatory cooling-off window into a narrow category of high-risk payments, on the theory that fraud built on urgency loses much of its power once the victim has two days to reconsider.
Why Georgia is doing this
The central bank says the measure is aimed at protecting vulnerable customers, and notes that comparable approaches are used in the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom and EU member states.
The domestic context is pointed. Georgia has an established problem with organised telephone fraud. One network exposed in 2025 was found to have deceived more than 6,000 people worldwide and embezzled at least $35.3 million over three years, and a subsequent journalistic investigation suggested parts of the operation had simply relocated within Tbilisi.
Cost to the banks
For Georgian banks and payment providers, the rule adds a compliance obligation with real operational cost: transaction monitoring capable of scoring behavioural anomalies, a documented callback process, and staff able to explain a fraud typology to a customer in language they will act on. Providers that already run behavioural analytics will absorb it easily; smaller payment organisations may not.
