The Hindu Business Line : Now, banks come to your rescue

What if you lose your ATM card and even before you realise it, all your money is drawn and someone just walks away with all that you so dearly earned and saved since years?

Banks such as HDFC, HSBC and State Bank of India have taken a step to prevent such frauds and thefts in their ATMs. Some of them have already installed ATMs with anti-fraud mechanism.

NCR Corporation, a major player in the field of ATM manufacturing, has introduced a Fraudulent Device Inhibitor to put a check on the rise in the number of frauds. The company is in talks with a couple of private and public sector banks to install ATMs enabled with the device .

Mr Nikhil Mhapankar, Regional Marketing Manager, Software and Security, Financial Solutions Division, NCR Corporation, South Asia, feels that frauds and thefts are still a little unknown thing in India as far as the transactions on ATMs are concerned. He, however, says, “The number of frauds is bound to increase.”

Holistic security

“ATM security has to be holistic in nature. There are many kinds of frauds taking place like that of physical fraud and card- related frauds,” says Mr Mhapankar.

The Fraudulent Device Inhibitor will prevent card trapping and skimming (skimming is the theft of credit card information by either manually copying down numbers or using a magnetic stripe reader on a pocket-sized electronic device).

‘Jitter’

The company had earlier launched ‘jitter’, which is one such anti-fraud measure, which has been incorporated in the ATMs of HDFC, HSBC and Karur Vysya Bank. The company is in talks with other banks for the installation of this mechanism.

“Jitter employs a rapid stop-start motion as the user’s card is inserted into the ATM and when it is returned, which prevents a fraudulent skimming device from reading the information on the card’s magnetic stripe. The technology remains invisible to the consumer and potential criminals,” says Mr Mhapankar.

State Bank of India, Dena Bank and IDBI Ltd have video surveillance mechanism called ‘Nvigil’ to check frauds.

Physical frauds

While Fraudulent Device Inhibitor and jitter will help to prevent card related frauds, ‘Fluiditi’ is an efficient method of checking physical frauds.

“It is an indelible ink, which will stain the notes as well as the fraudster, thereby making the notes absolutely useless. This kind of system is prevalent in Australia, where physical frauds are rampant,” says Mr Mhapankar.

He, however, feels that banks have not taken a keen interest in this kind of a fraud-prevention mechanism as India is yet to witness that kind of physical frauds.

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Now, banks come to your rescue