Fraudulent debit card transactions on the rise in AP

In the beginning, these cases were mostly concentrated in Kadapa district and subsequently had spread to Nellore and other parts of the state

Fraudulent Internet debit card transactions are on the rise in the state and form the second highest among the complaints being received by the Banking Ombudsman after the disputed ATM transactions.

In this case, the additional security feature — an instant password sent to customer’s mobile phone at the time of every transaction — provided by the banks to check such instances has also become the target of the fraudsters, according to M Sebastian, Banking Ombudsman of Andhra Pradesh.

Culprits are securing duplicate SIM cards of the customers from the mobile operators by impersonating them stating they had lost the original SIM card and were able to complete the transaction by knowing the instant password, he said on Thursday.

 

About 75 per cent of the 140 cases cleared by the Ombudsman office in recent times are regarding the debit card transactions on the Internet.

In the beginning, these cases were mostly concentrated in Kadapa district and subsequently spread to Nellore and other parts of the state, he said.

“We have approached the telecom companies through RBI channels and asked them to take adequate precautions in issuing duplicate SIM cards. We are also asking the banks to discuss this issue with the mobile operators,” Sebastian told reporters.

On the whole, the number of bank-customer related complaints is also on the rise and most are ATM, credit card and debit card related transactions. The Ombudsman office received 5,267 complaints last year compared with 5,012 complaints in the previous year.

Interestingly, the State Bank of India (SBI) and its associated banks top the list by accounting 47.2 per cent (previous year it was 41 per cent) of the total complaints while the public sector banks as a class accounted for 72 per cent of the inflow of complaints, according to the Ombudsman.