The Reserve Bank of India has asked banks to upgrade all ATMs by September 2017 with extra safety measures to process EMV chip and PIN cards to prevent skimming and cloning of debit and credit cards.
Even with the POS terminal infrastructure in the country enabled to accept and process EMV chip and PIN cards, the ATM infrastructure continues to process the card transactions based on data from the magnetic stripe, RBI said. "As a result, the ATM card transactions remain vulnerable to skimming, cloning, etc. frauds, even though the cards are EMV chip and PIN based," a notification said. The bank said all banks in India and the White Label ATM operators should ensure that all the existing ATMs installed/operated by them are enabld for processing of EMV chip and PIN cards by September 30, 2017. All new ATMs will necessarily be enabled for EMV chip and PIN processing from inception. RBI said it has become necessary to mandate EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) chip and PIN card acceptance and processing at ATMs also. "For the purpose of switching, clearing and settlement of their ATM transactions banks, with the approval of their board, may join and any authorised ATM/card network provider."
RBI deputy governor SS Mundra recently said the RBI had surveyed almost 4,000 ATMs in India with sample size fairly representing geographies and bank categories. "Almost one-third of the ATMs were found to be not working at that point. Violation of regulatory instructions on display material, facilities for differently abled etc. were also observed. We will be taking necessary supervisory action in this regard," he said.
