Banks Suggest 12 Hours Gap Between 2 ATM Withdrawals; OTP Based ATM Activity Also Suggested

Frauds, especially online and bank-related have expanded themselves throughout the country, like wildfire. The count of ATM frauds registered in the Assessment Year 2018-19 was recorded to be 980, which is the highest number till today. Inspite of government taking precautionary actions in such cases, this number has increased significantly since the past 2 years.

To curb this and reduce the number of such cases, the Delhi State-Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) have come up with suggestions for measures to prevent ATM frauds, including a time lag of six to 12 hours between two transactions.

How Could ATM Frauds Come in Check?

A meeting of 18 bank representatives met in Delhi last week, to ideate and come up with solutions for reducing the number of ATM frauds that have deeply rooted itself in the country.

Considering that a lot of these frauds take place particularly from around midnight to early morning, Mukesh Kumar Jain, MD and CEO of OBC suggested that a bar on transactions for a certain period could turn out to be helpful.

 Not just this, the committee also came up with the idea of including a time lag of six to 12 hours between two transactions. If this proposal is accepted, of course for public’s own good, we can expect that people wouldn’t be able to withdraw cash for a stipulated period in a day. Several other methods too have been suggested, like coming up with an OTP-linked withdrawal alerts on the phone number of the card holder, similar to the one used for online transactions using credit or debit cards.

Bankers are also looking at a centralised monitoring system for ATMs with a two-way communication. This means that the camera will keep an eye on the ATM machine even if the guard doesn’t. As of today, out of 2600 ATMs of OBC, 300 are covered by this system. In fact, through such a mechanism, OBC is expecting an annual savings of around Rs 50 crore as guards will become redundant. 

Record of ATM Frauds

Maharashtra beats the capital city and holds the highest number of ATM frauds in the country, with a solid number of 233 cases in 2018-19, followed by Delhi and Tamil Nadu, marking mark 179 and 147 cases. Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura were the only states with zero fraud cases.

In Maharashtra, people lost Rs 4.8 crore to bank fraud, while in Delhi people lost Rs 2.9 crore. Tamil Nadu acing too, lost more money than Delhi, Rs 3.36 crore. To top this off, the total of 980 fraud cases recorded, has been finalised at the count when only amounts greater than Rs 1 lakh was considered.