ATM fraud in India is not a new crime. It has been in existence for long. Even techno legal solutions for the same have been provided in this regard by techno legal experts for long. However, ATM frauds were not taken seriously by Indian government in general and reserve bank of India (RBI) in particular.It is only recently that RBI took some pro active actions in this regard. RBI would soon ask banks to shift to chip-based ATM cards from the existing magnet strips ones and upgrade the currency vending machines. This was one of the original solutions provided by Praveen Dalal, a Supreme Court Lawyer and leading techno legal expert of India.
According to Praveen Dalal ATM frauds cannot be tackled successfully till we use techno legal measures. The technological mechanisms like Designated time, Microchip technology, Biometric tokens, Enhanced security, ATM Monitoring, Customised softwares, Customer motivation, Alerts, etc can be used to minimise and prevent ATM frauds in India, suggests Dalal.
In a welcome move, RBI has accepted some of the suggestions of Praveen Dalal, including using a chip-based ATM card. According to Dalal the banks should use cards containing a microchip that can make them harder to forge.
RBI has also decided to adopt widespread changes in the existing IT system of the Indian banking industry to make banking services more safe and secure. The apex bank has also suggested setting up separate cell on bank fraud in police departments.It has also suggested that for debit or credit card transactions at the POS (point of sale) terminals, PIN-based authorisation should be put in place instead of the signature-based system. The non-PIN based POS terminal would be withdrawn in a phased manner.
