SBP develops reporting mechanism to curb Digital Banking Frauds

In a bid to curtail the digital banking frauds and attempted frauds information through call centers, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in collaboration with other stakeholders has initiated various measures.

The central bank in order to have sufficient information about these frauds has developed two standardized formats to record information relating to attempted and committed fake call frauds.

As per SBP, at the time of receiving the calls from customers for reporting of these frauds, the agents at call centers of all Banks/MFBs will record the information, where available, as per the given formats.

Banks/MFBs will report data recorded as per the prescribed formats to the Offsite Supervision & Enforcement Department (OSED) of SBP on monthly basis. The data will be reported in soft copy in Microsoft Excel within 10 days from the close of every month.

The SBP advised Banks/MFBs to ensure that the call center agents are sufficiently trained to handle calls received for reporting digital banking frauds. They must be capable of identifying attempted digital banking frauds related calls when a naive customer unaware of fraudulent attempt reports such instances, stated SBP.

Furthermore, Banks/MFBs will report the relevant information to PTA for blocking SIM/Device of the fraudsters used for committed/attempted digital banking frauds as soon as identified.

SBP added that as a control mechanism to avoid any further financial loss, the call agents upon receiving calls for blocking digital channels/cards in case of fraud will immediately block all channels temporarily, under intimation to the customer, before seeking detailed verification from the customer.

The verification required from the customer as per procedure will subsequently be acquired on the same call. For blocking of digital channels, the requirement to call from registered numbers would not be necessary since the customer may not have access to his/her registered telephone number; however, the banks may conduct enhanced verification in cases where the request for blocking of channels was received from an unregistered number.

Lastly, in order to unblock the account/continue services, the Banks/MFBs will guide the customers as per their relevant policies. The SBP urged Banks/MFBs to implement the measures within 30 days.