India remains vulnerable to credit and debit card frauds despite measures

Despite strong measures taken by the Reserve Bank of India to prevent credit and debit card fraud, the National Crime Records Bureau — in its 2017 report on crime in India — has captured credit card fraud in its statistics for the first time.

India was ranked among the top five countries globally that are vulnerable to credit card fraud, according to the 2016 Global Consumer Fraud Report published by payments technology company ACI Worldwide. The RBI has made chip-enabled credit and debit cards (which in some cases double as ATM cards) mandatory. Cards with magnetic strips, which store all important customer data, are considered more vulnerable to cloning.

In 2017-18, the sum total of money that went into the wrong hands stood at Rs 65.26 crore.

The central bank changed its norms to limit the liability of customers to card fraud, in July 2017. Under the revised guidelines, liability would be shared by banks and customers, depending on circumstances under which the fraud took place.

Most card frauds were targeted at ICICI Bank customers during 2017-18. As many as 348 cases were reported, with Rs 7 crore embezzled. State Bank of India customers were defrauded to the tune of Rs 10 crore, in 144 reported cases, according to information available in Parliament questions.

Source: Lok Sabha questions, NCRB 2017 report on Crime in India