New Delhi: Kerala’s ATM fraudulent cash withdrawals and the arrest of Romanian has brought the issue of card security into focus even as more Indians use credit, debit and ATM cards to either pay for goods and services or withdraw cash.
With about 60 per cent of the 650 million debit and credit cards issued in India still using the older magnetic strip technology, according to industry estimates, a large number of card users are vulnerable to frauds like skimming. Criminals can capture data on the card’s magnetic strip using electronic devices (a process known as skimming) and then use that information to make fake cards that are used to defraud the card holder and card issuer. The remaining 40 per cent of cards have been migrated to the secure chip-based EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) format. According to an RBI directive, all old magnetic strip cards issued by banks will have to migrate to EMV by December 2018.
Managing Director & CEO, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), A.P Hota, said “We have put in place Fraud Risk Management (FRM) solutions to alert the member banks of suspicious transactions. If a skimming device is installed at an ATM, it can be noticed and card users must be very careful while withdrawing cash. However thin it may be, the skimming device attached to the ATM keyboard can be noticed and one must report it the bank immediately.”