Customers wait to be served at the Consolidated Bank banking hall on August 25, 2015. [File, Standard]

Commercial banks have begun closely monitoring customer transactions as directed by the banking regulator to combat financial crimes, banks revealed yesterday.

This is after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) issued new guidelines requiring banks to strengthen their transaction monitoring and reporting processes to identify and report any suspicious activity.

Several large lenders said they are consequently preparing to implement new payment processing requirements mandated by the country’s central bank, including the introduction of “Purpose of Payment” (PoP) codes for Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) transactions.

In a message to customers, tier one lender NCBA stated that the changes are part of Kenya’s adoption of the ISO 20022 international financial messaging standard, which allows for more detailed data exchange in payments.

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