HDFC Bank replacing merchant terminals

The country’s largest credit card issuer, HDFC Bank, has started replacing some point of sale machines at merchant establishments following card ‘skimming’ frauds, a top official said.

“We are replacing machines at some merchants,” the bank’s head for credit card and merchant acquiring, Parag Rao, told reporters here last evening.

Rao said cases of ‘skimming’ were witnessed of late, wherein the card data is copied illegally in an otherwise legitimate transaction, to be used fraudulently later. Rao did not share the number of machines being replaced or the number of skimming cases detected.

HDFC Bank is one of the largest in the merchant acquisition space as well, with close to 0.25 million machines. It has over 6.4 million cards in circulation, with portfolio dues of Rs 10,000 crore and 35 per cent market share.

Asked whether there was any complicity at the merchants’ end, he said multiple investigation agencies were dealing with the issue and he was not in the know.

He said overall the instances of fraud reported in the country amounted to only a tenth of those observed in the developed world and instances of fraud cases had no bearing on the delinquency levels observed in the bank’s card portfolio.

Managing Director Aditya Puri said such frauds were a sector-wide phenomenon and being a part of the ecosystem, the bank also witnessed such instances. He advised everyone to be careful.