The Indian Regulator has managed to buck the trend and witness fall in complaints from consumers on ATM / Credit / Debit Cards. Card related complaints declined from 17,116 to 14,492 in FY 2011-12, a fall of 15%.
SBI and Associate Banks witnessed the same level of complaints. It is the Private Banks and Foreign Banks which saw lower level of complaints both registering a fall of 28% and 44% respectively. Total of 9350 Complaints were related to ATM Cards alone. Other complaints that the RBI received were – Wrong Debits to Card Accounts, Skimming of Cards, Unsolicited Credit Cards, Insurance, Loan Over Phone Activation and Annual fees on Credit Cards despite being offered for Free, initially.
What Measures of RBI have Helped ?
Beyond doubt the Second Level of Password Authentication – Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code has helped us witness decline in complaints. For ATM Cards, SMS Alerts on all transactions have helped curb the faurd. Also mandating PIN for each transaction has helped because forgetting card at the ATM will not help the next customer to withdraw cash. To curb, Skimming of Cards, RBI has now mandated that all Credit Cards will be EMV Chip enabled. However, HDFC Bank has issued Both EMV Chip and Magnetic Stripe on the Card while the latter is not really required.
Despite working under Arrogant and Corrupt Government, the RBI is doing a great job and we congratulate all the officers of the RBI for not bowing down to Finance Ministry.