Credit card and debit card frauds are not new to India and rest of the world. The more of the security you create, there are more people ready to break them and crack them.
A slew of banks in India will either replace or ask customer to change the security codes of as many as 3.2 million debit cards on fears of potential breaches, according to a report .
The move comes a day after the country’s No. 1 lender State Bank of India said that it had blocked cards of certain customers. The reason they say is that the security has been breached for these cards. Cloning of the cards is not new and there are people who can operate them with their mobile phones, like they are operating the TV these days.
Of the debit cards affected, 2.6 million are on Visa and MasterCard platforms, while 600,000 are on the home-grown RuPay platform, the report said citing unnamed people aware of the matter.
The worst-hit of the card-issuing banks are State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank, the paper said. Yes Bank said in a statement on Thursday it had proactively undertaken a review of its ATMs and found no evidence of any breach.
Even though the banks say that they could not find any evidence, there are customers who have lost some money because of the said security breach. Now the banks have thought it fit to change the cards and block some cards in the process, so that they can minimize the damage to be caused in the near future.
SBI had said that it had been informed by card network providers about a potential risk to some cards, and was replacing those cards as a precautionary measure.
Other banks did not immediately respond to requests for comment. There were 697.2 million debit cards in India as of end-July, according to data from the central bank.
