The numbers
As at 31 December 2025, at least 479,000 Singapore customers had activated Money Lock — the anti-scam feature that locks a portion of savings against unauthorised digital transfers — securing close to S$44 billion in aggregate. The feature was rolled out across major Singapore banks as part of a coordinated push by the Singapore Police Force's Anti-Scam Centre working with the banks.
Money Lock works by restricting digital access to locked funds — transfers out require in-branch verification or a similarly deliberate unlock process, specifically to blunt scams that rely on remote, digital-only access to drain an account quickly.
Why this is worth knowing if you're not a scam target
Money Lock (and adjacent measures like transaction holds and cooling-off periods rolled out this year) reflects a broader shift: banks are increasingly willing to add friction to digital account actions in exchange for security. That trade-off is aimed at fraud, but it changes the texture of ordinary banking interactions too.
If you've activated Money Lock, or your bank has flagged your account for any of these newer protective measures, it's worth knowing that legitimate calls — including a routine credit card annual fee waiver request — may involve additional identity verification as a side effect of the same infrastructure protecting your locked funds. This isn't a sign anything is wrong with your request; it's the same verification layer working as designed.
What this doesn't affect
Money Lock specifically restricts transfers out of locked funds. It has no direct bearing on your credit card account, your annual fee, or the retention pathway a fee waiver request runs through. The two systems don't overlap in terms of what they gate — Money Lock is about protecting savings from unauthorised movement, not about credit card fee decisions.
Where they can intersect is in general account verification friction: a bank that's built more protective infrastructure into its digital banking channel this year tends to apply a more careful verification posture across all phone banking interactions, not just the ones the specific safeguard was designed for.
Practical takeaway
If you're planning to call about your annual fee and you've got Money Lock or similar protections active on your account, budget slightly more time for identity verification at the start of the call than you might have a year or two ago. It doesn't change the underlying retention pathway or the odds of a successful waiver — it's simply part of a more layered verification environment that's become standard across Singapore banking in 2026.
The clawbacks.ai approach
Our AI agent is built to work with exactly this kind of evolving verification landscape — OTP relay, dynamic authentication steps, and multi-layer identity checks are all handled mid-call without requiring anything extra from you.
20% success fee only if your waiver is granted. Nothing if it isn't.