Debit card tangle

As per a recent newspaper report, a sick bed-ridden lady gave her debit card to her husband for withdrawing ₹25,000 from an ATM. He went but as luck would have it, the machine didn’t dispense cash though it dispensed the slip saying the account has been debited with ₹25,000. The distraught couple went to the bank (SBI) which while admitting that subsequent reconciliation for the day did reveal excess cash of ₹25,000, turned down the request for reversal of the debit on the sanctimonious ground that debit cards aren’t transferable. That it was transferred for the nonce was revealed by the CCTV inside the ATM. The Bengaluru district consumer forum upheld the bank’s stand and exhorted the lady to in future send her husband to the branch with a ‘self’ cheque for such emergency withdrawals.

To be sure, the universal banking rule is cards aren’t transferable but this diktat is followed more in defiance than in compliance. But the defiance is not wilful but for reasons of convenience and trust. A middle class father after all treats the purse of his dependents as his own. Indeed most of us do. In vast majority of the cases, financially illiterate persons take a literate person along who knows how to withdraw from ATMs. Do they all stand condemned in the eyes of the law?

What the RBI can do is to relax the law in favour of intra-family liberties with the card in a crunch situation. Yes in a crunch situation alone because in normal times nobody cares about such fine technicalities and legalities. One wonders if banks swing into action when heavy withdrawals are made from ATMs by the members of the deceased family to meet his/her funeral expenses and to otherwise ensure nil balance so as to escape the rigours of the law of inheritance. Technically and legally they should because if the CCTV inside ATM rooms can spot the friendly or avuncular impostor, the death certificate can point to improper and frenetic withdrawals hot on the death of the account holder till the formality of submitting the death certificate to the branch was completed.

And why this fuss about cards at ATM only? What about cards used at business establishments especially at local kirana stores where CCTVs might be conspicuous by their absence? Is it all right for an impostor to swipe card but not withdraw cash from an ATM?

And what about online transactions which a husband makes on behalf of his wife and vice-versa? A husband knowing the login ID and the related password of his wife’s net banking account often books airline tickets and makes day-to-day sundry online purchases. How on earth will the bank find out that the account holder had broken the golden rule of banking — do not divulge your password to anyone! The truth is net banking is often done from the comfort of one’s home. And at home there is no CCTV!

It is amazing that the SBI took such an easy escape route when a poor middle class couple was involved when bank frauds and NPA capers are done all the time right under its nose. The small man is always at the receiving end of a bank’s negligence as well as hyper technical interpretation and enforcement of rules. This is not to suggest that card holders can be blasé about giving their cards to anyone they please. Ideally cards must be held away from the gaze of even husbands just as the net banking passwords must be. But India hasn’t reached that ideal yet.

The writer is a Chennai-based chartered accountant

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