Research On The Legal Liability For Frozen User’s Funds In The Third-Party Payment Transactions

In order to prevent fraud,money laundering,terrorist financing and other risky transactions under the payment channels of third-party payment institutions,according to the regulatory requirements of the People’s Bank of China,third-party payment institutions need to take effective measures against suspected risky transactions.However,it is found that users have "suspected" risk transaction behavior and the ambiguous legislative expression that third-party payment institutions should "take effective measures" in this regard,which leads to improper behavior of third-party payment institutions in dealing with risk transaction in practice,resulting in rights and interests conflict with users.This article through the case study method,as well as to the third-party payment mechanism with the user service agreement between the text analysis,comparing with the existing regulations,found that the third party payment institutions for suspected risk trade payment account freeze its account and capital measures,the start freezing expansion,freezing procedure is not standard,so that the error to freeze the user the question of funds.In judicial precedents,the regulation of the People’s Bank of China almost becomes the exemption clause for third-party payment institutions to take freezing measures,and frozen funds belong to the property of provisions in financial supervision,which makes it difficult to protect the rights and interests of users with wrongly frozen funds.The academic discussion on this issue still remains in the dispute over the qualification of the third-party payment institution as the subject of freezing user funds.By examining the behavior of third-party payment institutions freezing users’ funds,this paper proposes that the overall improvement path should be guided by the concept of balance between payment security and efficiency.Measures taken by third-party payment institutions in the face of suspected risky transactions should be standardized.First,the situation of freezing measures taken by third-party payment institutions should be restricted.Second,the regulatory authorities strengthen the examination of the independent rules of third-party payment institutions,requiring the establishment of the notification procedure for taking freezing measures and the appeal procedure for freezing doubts;Third,third-party payment institutions that wrongly freeze users’ funds shall be liable for breach of contract to users.