SBI card skimming: Stay safe from debit, credit card related frauds; how EMV chips can help

State Bank of India or SBI is sending messages to its account holders, asking them to change their SBI cards (both debit and credit cards). The message reads: 'due to the RBI guidelines the bank is changing the ATM, RuPy debit card and credit cards of the customers for convenient and secure banking'. This change of SBI cards is without any charges that have spurned the customers as to what reasons the banks are doing this and what propelled Reserve Bank of India or RBI to change the ATM, RuPay debit card and credit card.

Speaking on the matter as to what propelled RBI to change the existing SBI cards (ATM, RuPay debit and credit cards) SEBI registered investment and banking expert Jitendra Solanki said, "To meet the global standards of debit and card payments, the RBI in May 2015, directed all Indian banks to change the existing cards by a chip-based cards called EMV (Europay Mastercard and Visa). The deadline given by the RBI for this exercise was December 2018 but the banks failed to meet that. However, this change of cards by SBI online services is in regard to that and these new EMV cards would help SBI online services to contain the SBI card skimming from the cyber criminals."

Elaborating upon how the EMV cards would contain SBI online skimming or any other banks online card skimming Pawan Duggal, a New Delhi-based cyber crime expert said, "The EMV cards would help SBI card holders from the malware attack that leads to cyber crime or online banking frauds through card cloning, phishing and skimming." Duggal said that in new chip-based EMV cards, the data storage would be impossible as there will be new data getting stored into the chip deleting the previous data after each transaction. It will help customers cause as skimming or card cloning would become difficult for the online fraudsters.

What is online skimming?

Online skimming is a malware attack on your system where the cyber crime fraudsters install a skimming device at the bank ATMs and the at the PoS machines at various shopping centres to download the ATM or credit card details along with your PIN. In case of EMV cards, one needs to use the PIN and then the OTP coming to his or her registered mobile while doing any transaction. So, it may be easy for the online malware fraudsters to fishout the bank details but without the OTP everytime, it would be difficult for the fraudsters to fish out money from your bank account.

Therefore, the new chip-based EMV cards would help SBI online skimming a difficult task for cyber crime habitual if not impossible. At least, the new card would enhance the safety of bank account holder's hard earned money for sure, said cyber crime or SBI online skimming squad experts.