SBP urges customers to remain vigilant against online frauds

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has urged customers to remain vigilant against suspicious messages and calls involving payments or transactions and never share their account PINs, passwords, or debit and credit card details with anyone.

While speaking at a conference titled 24th Future Banking Summit & Expo 2026, organised by Total Communications in Karachi Said Ahmed Sumair, Joint Director, Payment Systems Policy and Oversight Department, SBP said that banking customers themselves are the first line of defence against online financial scams, and greater awareness and vigilance can help prevent fraud.

He said that despite the SBP has issued a regulatory regime on cyber security and mitigation of frauds and banks have adequately applied controls, scammers find it easier to make social engineering attempts to defraud people.

“Customers need to exercise greater caution when receiving suspicious messages regarding payments or transactions, and should never share their account PINs, passwords, or debit or credit card details with anyone”, he added.

Sumair said that it’s high time that people should get themselves aware of the ways the scammers can defraud them. If a person calls you and tells you that he has mistakenly sends funds to you; you should always check your account statement first before believing him.

To make the scam appear legitimate, the fraudsters also send SMS messages mimicking the language and format used by banks, claiming that an amount has been debited from the recipient’s account, he said.

Customers must remember that genuine banking alerts should come from the bank’s designated SMS short code, typically a four-digit number, rather than a private mobile number, he mentioned.

Secondly, scammers may spoof the UAN numbers of the bank’s helpline to appear authentic, Sumair said and added that a bank never calls anyone from their official helpline, as they are to receive the calls only. So even before picking up a call from a so-called UAN number, you are pretty sure that it may be a fraud attempt, he said.

Remember that it’s difficult to hack into a bank’s information system but it’s easy to hack someone’s trust, he said.

The public should also not pay attention to calls such as you have won a prize from Jeeto Pakistan and BISP owes you money. They all are scamming calls, he said.

Shabbar Zaidi, Former Chairman, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), said the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) loan programs are no solution to Pakistan’s problem. The country’s debt has surged significantly in the last four years, increasing to Rs85.5 trillion at present from Rs47 trillion in 2022.

The piling up debt is part of the problem rather than part of the solution, he said, adding friendly countries in the Middle East may not continue to offer bailout packages in the wake of the ongoing political crisis in the region.

Rana Shahzad Qaiser, Director General, Ministry of IT, Government of Sindh, said that the provincial government was working on Sindh Cloud Policy. This will help grow digital banking furthermore in the province.

The ministry has set up the Sindh Enterprise Incubation Center in Karachi to help start-ups grow. Besides, they are giving technical and vocational training to help people get skilled and get suitable jobs to earn their bread and better and more.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026