Idea of seeking report on debit cards misuse is to contain damage: Jaitley

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said that he has sought a report on the misuse of debit cards after a massive data breach compromised over three million cards, adding that the idea is to contain the damage.

"We have now reached a level of maturity in governance which helps us distinguish between an erroneous and a corrupt decision," he said.

The government has asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and banks to provide details of hacking and also report on banks' preparedness to deal with cyber crimes.

The Maharashtra Police's cyber security cell has reached out to the banks asking for details on the data breach, though the banks have made no formal request for a police investigation yet.

The banks said that they have advised the customers to change the security codes or PINs for their debit cards and have blocked the cards of those they could not contact.

Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das earlier today said the RBI has been asked to investigate the matter, adding that a detailed report has been sought from banks amid fears that millions of debit cards data may have been stolen in one of the country's largest-ever cyber security incidents.

Das further said there was no need to panic over the feared security breach.

Several banks in India are replacing or asking their customers to change security codes of as many as 3.25 million debit cards due to fears that the card data may have been stolen.

Card network providers Visa, MasterCard and home-grown RuPay run by the National Payments Corp of India (NPCI) swung into action earlier in September after receiving complaints from some banks that their clients' cards had been fraudulently used mainly in China and the United States even though they were in India, said AP Hota, the chief of NPCI, which also runs the biggest network of shared ATMs.