CHENNAI: Growing concern over the increase in number of complaints from ATM users on credit card fraud will now see the Reserve Bank of India issuing a strict directive to private and nationalised banks, asking them to adhere to police instructions on security guidelines. In the backdrop of about 60 complaints received from bank customers by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) over the last one and half months, Commissioner of Police J K Tripathy, ADGP (Crime) Abhay Kumar Singh and CCB officials - DCP A Radhika, ADC Dr M Sudhakar and ACP John Rose, held a meeting with the RBI Regional Director N S Viswanathan and 22 representatives of commercial banks on Tuesday to chalk out a strategy to tackle the menace of credit card fraud. On the sudden spurt in the number of cases, a senior CCB official told Express that a five-member gang, including three Sri Lankans, was arrested in the first week of October on charges of printing fake credit cards. The gang had stolen the data of several customers and was probably operating from behind bars in a bid to show that they were not involved in the racket. The kingpin of the gang, Manoj Kumar, a native of Pattukottai, was also still at large, he said. The CCB official said the meeting discussed ways by which banks could tighten both system and infrastructure security. The arrest of another gang on Sunday showed that courier companies, which dispatched the credit cards to bank customers, were turning out to be a weak link in the ATM system. “Since the credit card data had been stolen by employees of a courier firm and used even before it reached the customer, we suggested that the card remain ‘dummy’ till it reaches the hands of the customer,” he said. “After ascertaining his/her identity through a set of questions over the phone, it could be activated.” The top police brass also insisted on frequent inspection of the ATM centres by bank officials to see if any skimmers had been inserted in the machines by fraudsters. “At present, the banks do not conduct any inspection,” the CCB officer said. “It was suggested that they maintain a roster for each ATM centre.” Another suggestion was that banks educate their customers to change their PIN number frequently. Besides, they could implement the ‘One-Time Password’ (OTP) method. “Inserting the card activates a call and the customer receives a new password over the cellphone from the bank for that transaction,” the official said. The police also took exception to the banks directing their customers straight away to them in the event of any fraud detection. Banks must accept the complaints, analyse the loopholes that led to the fraud and submit a progressive report to the police, which would help them in the investigation, they told the bankers. Since chip-based credit cards offered better security than those with magnetic stripes, they must also think in terms of switching over to them. The police suggested a ‘Know your customer’ plan under which credit and debit cards will carry photographs of customers. ADGP Abhay Kumar Singh suggested that all banks have a main account of the customer and an add-on-account, which will have a minimum balance, and the loss in the event of a fraud would not be much. The RBI chief said that a circular would be issued to all private and nationalised banks in the city, stipulating that the guidelines set by the police were mandatory.
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