Furquan Moharkan and Uma Kannan, Bengaluru, DH News Service, Sep 19 2017, 2:45 IST
Many banks, including Bengaluru-based Canara Bank and Corporation Bank, have blocked cards of hundreds of customers in the city to prevent siphoning off customers' cash.
The recent ATM skimming incident involving two foreigners in the city has exposed the vulnerability of debit and credit cards. The banking industry has resorted to a large-scale blocking of cards to avoid any fraudulent transactions.
Many banks, including Bengaluru-based Canara Bank and Corporation Bank, have blocked cards of hundreds of customers in the city to prevent siphoning off customers’ cash.
Kotak Mahindra Bank, which witnessed skimming at its ATMs by foreign nationals last Friday, has sent out messages to their customers to change their PIN numbers.
To begin with, Canara Bank has blocked close to 1,000 cards as the bank has perceived threat on many of its cards. It is expected to block more cards in the coming days. An official from the bank confirmed to DH that the measure has been a fallout of recent skimming activity. The bank has also instructed the blocked card users to collect new cards.
In a message to select customers, the bank said, “Dear Cardholder Referring to News item that there may be likely threat on certain cards we as a pro-active measure blocked your card. Contact your base branch for replacement of card.”However, the bank will not be charging any fee for replacing such cards, a bank official said adding, “There has been no case of ATM fraud till now.”
Canara Bank has a card base of 3.77 crore debit cards and 2.20 lakh credit cards. A Kotak Mahindra Bank spokesperson said, “All transactions relating to debit and credit cards of our bank are monitored through a Fraud Monitoring System, and every suspicious transaction is immediately alerted for action. Our ATMs are equipped with CCTV monitoring capability, and are inspected by our staff and empanelled agency to check for any suspicious activity in the ATM booth.”
The bank has informed all customers who used the three affected ATMs during the period between September 1 and September 12, 2017 through SMS and email to change their ATM PIN to prevent any misuse.
Mangaluru-based Corporation Bank has blocked close to 70 cards in Bengaluru. The bank has one crore debit cards and one lakh credit cards in circulation nationally. The country’s largest bank, State Bank of India (SBI), has however not blocked any cards till now. “Till the time the skimmer doesn’t get access to PIN and CVV of customers, they are safe. There is no use of blocking cards, unless we see some suspicious activity,” Neeraj Vyas, Deputy Managing Director and COO of SBI told DH.
In April this year, Mumbai cyber police arrested a Bulgarian national in connection with the skimming racket. Ankush Johar, Director, Infosec Ventures and HumanFirewall.io, a provider of human information security awareness and preparedness solutions, said, “There is a very large underground market where stolen credit card numbers are available with full details. The clone cards are shipped to people involved, and they in turn, visit ATMs and siphon off money. Of the money received, they keep 10-15%, and settle the balance amount.”