Bankers support proposed anti-ATM fraud measures

CEBU, Philippines - Although the Cebu Bankers Club has yet to come up with a unified position on Senator Grace Poe’s proposed anti-ATM fraud measures, CBC past president and spokesperson Prudencio Gesta said it is a welcome development.

Gesta, however added that if the government will impose a "uniform process" for banks to reimbuse depositors who fell victim to ATM fraud, banks will be forced to get another insurance coverage for this purpose.

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

Poe said that banks should replenish 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 while the case is still being investigated.

By getting another insurance coverage, Gesta said both depositors and the banks will be protected.

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

Meanwhile, to combat card cloning or skimming, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (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,

According to Gesta, cost of insurance coverage for this particular protection maybe passed on to consumers, or absorbed by the banks. (FREEMAN)