The State Bank of Pakistan is closely monitoring the rising cases of e-banking frauds and it will issue necessary guidelines to avert these crimes soon. So far SBP has completed more than 20 Information Systems Inspections for all major banks including foreign banks, Islamic Banks and Micro Finance Banks. It has also conducted IS Inspection of an ATM Switch, said Naveed-ul-Zafar, SBP's senior Joint Director, Banking Inspection Department (BID).
Expressing his views in a panel discussion on 'managing fraud within e-banking arena' at the 9th Annual International e-banking Conference organised by Total Communications and Pakistan software Export Board at a local hotel on Thursday, Naveed said that BID is responsible for on-site inspection of Banks, DFIs, Micro Finance Banks, Islamic Banks, Exchange Companies and designated payment systems under the empowerment of BCO and EFT Act.
"In addition, BID of SBP has conducted four major investigations of cyber crimes in the area of ATMs, Virtual Banking and Cheque frauds," he informed. He said that Payment Systems Department (PSD) of SBP has also initiated PAN (Card number) masking project and it involved reconfiguration of all POS terminals countrywide, which is over 0.1 million for masking middle five digits of PAN on printed receipts. It was a major threat as fraudster can misuse card info of any credit card through retained receipts at merchant having all card info printed thereon, he added.
With the masking of PAN clone of any credit card using same info has been avoided and it helped in minimising "Card-not-present" frauds through internet, he informed. During the discussion experts urged the banking industry to take more steps to prevent frauds in e-banking transactions. The panellists comprising banking and technology industry specialists highlighted the ever-increasing use of banking services through alternate channels.
Common citizens are using more and more debit cards and internet banking in Pakistan as a result online transactions have increased exponentially. Therefore, the banks must make special arrangements to avert fraud incidents, the experts said. "Branchless banking has increased manyfold and the facility is being offered from many under-services areas, which has increased the chances of fraud in the electronic banking transaction," they said. Therefore, banks are needed to be more vigilant and develop infrastructure that can support anti-fraud mechanism, they added.
Cost of such initiatives is on the high side now but with the advancement in technology it is expected that this will be manageable in coming years, they informed. Salman Raza, Product Manager Debit and Prepaid Card Standard Chartered Bank, Mahir Mohsin Sheikh, CEP Trillium Information Technology Security, Rady Qadri, Head of Training Soneri Bank and Farooq Wahab Nayyer, Head of Information Security and Compliance Department were part of the panel discussion.
Earlier, speakers from Pakistan and Europe apprised the audience of the latest advancement in electronic banking and related technologies. The conference started with the presentation of Kumail Morawala on 'Cloud Computing'. This new technology can revolutionise how the data is stored and handled, he told the audience. Shahjehan Larik, Regional Sales Manager Oracle Corporation, Ayub Butt CEO ZRG, Bassam Mardini, Regional Sales Manager Wincor Nixdrof, Niel Beckley of IBM and Igor Bakhtin, Director Business Development COLVIR Software Solutions Ltd, UK also spoke on different aspects of electronic, core and transactional banking and cash management.
Comments
Comments are closed.