Crypto is notorious for customers getting "rugged"—slang for getting the rug pulled from under them by a service or project that disappears abruptly. But crypto is hardly the only place this is happening. In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of clients getting rugged by their banks.
In these cases, the rug-pull isn't as bad since the banks eventually return their money. But the short-term impact is just as bad since customers lose access to their bank account and credit cards, sometimes for weeks, leaving them scrambling to pay bills or just get through the day. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, there is no precise data on how often banks are doing this, but there has been a 50% increase in the last two years of "suspicious activity reports" (SARs), which often lead to them ghosting customers without warning.
