Chile Watch: Banco de Chile virus, Cryptocurrency trader ruling

Banco de Chile, one of the country's two biggest lenders, said it was affected by a virus last week.

The bank said the virus, which impacted the likes of branch IT systems, was not targeted at clients or their accounts, local paper La Tercera reported the bank as saying.

Banco de Chile said contingency measures implemented meant that client data was secure.

On Thursday, banking watchdog Sbif said it had asked the lender for a report into the incident and that it was monitoring the situation.

In April, Mexico's electronic funds transfer system SPEI was the subject of a cyberattack. At least five institutions were affected. The central bank asked financial institutions to beef up security.

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Chilean cryptocurrency trader CryptoMKT resumed operations in its home market on Monday after state lender BancoEstado reopened its account.

The news comes after the country's competition court issued a temporary injunction ordering BancoEstado and lenders Scotiabank and Itaú CorpBanca to accept CryptoMKT and fellow trader Buda as clients again.

Under the ruling, the three lenders are required to reopen the accounts of CryptoMKT and Buda, temporarily, while a legal challenge filed by the two SMEs against 10 banks is fully considered by the court.

Banks had closed the accounts citing concerns over compliance and a lack of specific regulations.

The three lenders had asked the court to revoke the temporary injunction. The court rejected their appeals but they could take their case to the supreme court, La Tercera said, citing comments from the cryptocurrency traders' legal team.