National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) which is an umbrella organization for all retail payments system in India have come up the statement relating to press reports on debit card compromise.

Mr. A. P Hota, MD & CEO, NPCI said, "Necessary corrective actions already have been taken and hence there is no reason for bank customers to panic. Advisory issued by NPCI to banks for re-cardification is more as a preventive exercise."

Here are 6 things NPCI said on reported debit card fraud:

1) Debit card fraud beginning

The beginning of problem was when complaints from few banks that their customer's cards were used fraudulently in other countries while customers were in India.

"Apprehending that this could be a case of card data compromise, all the ATMs and PoS terminals in India and three card networks - RuPay, Visa and MasterCard worked together in the month of September 2016", the NPCI said.

2) NPCI analysis on fraud

NPCI after analysis said that there was a possible compromise at one of the payment switch provider's system. NPCI and other schemes identified the period of compromise and the total number of card numbers which could have been compromised during that period.

3) Rupay card holders are safe

As per NPCI reports, there were no complaints from any of the RuPay cardholders, NPCI has taken the lead role for proactive steps in discussing the matter with various banks and card networks. There is no RuPay cardholder who had lodged any complaint for such fraudulent usage, the NPCI said.

4) 32 million debit cards compromised

The complaints received of fraudulent withdrawal are limited to cards of 19 banks and 641 customers. The total amount involved is Rs. 1.3 crore as reported by various affected banks to NPCI. Cards of all these complainants are related to other card schemes, the NPCI said.

All affected banks have been alerted by all card networks that a total card base of about 3.2 million could have been possibly compromised, added further.

5) Banks alert customers

Banks have advised their customers to change their debit card PIN. In situations where customers could not be contacted, the cards have been blocked and fresh cards are being issued by member banks.

6) NPCI

NPCI said that it is closely working with all stakeholders and once the forensic investigation is over and the root cause is identified, we will issue a further set of recommendations as precautionary measures to member banks.

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