Banks reiterate warning on ATM fraud

CEBU, Philippines - Bankers have reiterated its warning to clients to be extra careful when transacting through the automated teller machines to avoid being victimized.

This is the call made by newly elected Cebu Bankers Club president Gino Gonzales, as requiring banks to put a security guard in every ATM is impossible for banks to comply.

Gonzales said instead of banks' spending money to secure clients from further ATM fraud, ATM users should be more vigilant in withdrawing their money from the machine.

Gonzales said the earlier proposal of Cebu city councilor Noel Wenceslao was to require banks to assign security guards in every ATM facility, especially in the off-site areas is commercially not feasible for bankers, as ATM are non-earning facility as its simply a value-added service.

Wenceslao said that the presence of guards would help deter attempts to victimize ATM users.

Gonzales said they have been receiving reports of ATM fraud in Metro Cebu, but don’t have official data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

BSP already said the best weapon against ATM fraud is for consumers to be more vigilant.

Senator Grace Poe recently announced that she is pushing for a measure mandating a “uniform process” for banks to reimburse depositors defrauded in ATM cloning.

Poe said that banks should “reinstate” the amount that the victims lost to ATM fraud.

Bank officials said that depositors lost some P220 million to ATM fraud in 2013.

Poe said she was collating the position papers of all the resource persons to craft a common procedure by which banks could restore the balances of their clients before the fraud.

Meantime, the senator said she had asked the banks to speed up their process in addressing complaints about ATM fraud.

On the other hand, If the government were to impose the "uniform process" for banks to reimburse victimized depositors, banks will be forced to get another insurance coverage on this purpose.

Meanwhile, the BSP has mandated banks to ditch the magnetic stripe technology in favor of the EMV chip technology in ATM cards by January 2017.

EMV is a chip-based technology developed by Europay, MasterCard and Visa.

It refers to payment chip cards that contain an embedded microprocessor that provides strong security features and other capabilities not possible with traditional magnetic strip cards. (FREEMAN)