ATM cards to have more security features

ATM cards issued by the public sector banks are found to be highly susceptible to fraud as they are made of inferior technology, according to the banking ombudsman of Andhra Pradesh.

"The cyber crime wing of the police department has been receiving 4-5 complaints every day involving impersonation and most of these cases pertain to the cards issued by the public sector banks," N Krishna Mohan, banking ombudsman and chief general manager of Reserve Bank of India, said on Wednesday.

According to him, starting November 1, 2013, the RBI has made it mandatory for all banks to implement a second factor authentication, in which the banks need to provide another password unique to each transaction, and to replace the magnetic stripe that stores data of the customer with an electronic chip-based card.

This is to protect the customer from the card-related fraud, which mostly happens when the information on the card, including the account number and the password are stolen. About 18 per cent of complaints reported at the Ombudsman office is of this nature, he said.

The number of customer complaints related to banking transactions, however, has come down to 4,303 in 2012-13 from 5,167 in the previous year as there has been an improvement in customer services at the branch level, according to him.