B

ank Indonesia (BI) plans to review the antifraud mechanisms of all Indonesian banks following a card-skimming incident, which affected Bank Mandiri customers last week.

BI Deputy Governor Halim Alamsyah said in Jakarta on Friday that the inspections would be conducted in the near future and would involve reevaluating the security measures of the banks' payment systems in order to prevent further incidents of fraud.

'We will examine whether all the banks have proper antifraud management strategies and secure payment systems in place to handle such cases,' Halim said on Friday.

Halim added that despite the quick response taken by Bank Mandiri following the incident, he suggested that the bank take further steps to enhance the security of its payment system.

'The bank has already implemented basic security measures at their ATMs, such as small surveillance cameras, but [due to this incident] I believe more can be done,' he added.

Similarly, the Financial Services Authority (OJK) praised Mandiri's actions in handling the situation, saying that the bank had reacted swiftly to prevent further cases through transaction profiling and compensating those affected by the skimming.

'We have been monitoring the situation and the bank's every move in handling this case, and will continue to do so, in the hope that the bank will further improve its security system,' the OJK's strategic management deputy commissioner, Lucky Fathul Hadibrata, said on Friday, as quoted by kompas.com.

Mandiri's corporate secretary, Nixon Napitupulu, said Friday that transactions at all Mandiri banks were working as normal and that no Mandiri customer had been disadvantaged by the card skimming.

However, Mandiri's senior executive vice president for transaction banking, Rico Usthavia Frans, had said in an earlier report that a number of customers had lost between Rp 250,000 (US$21.91) and Rp 2 million from their accounts as a result of the attempted fraud. He promised that the bank would compensate those customers that had suffered financial losses.

Bank Mandiri began replacing customers' bank cards after initial indications emerged that their card details had been skimmed as early as last Friday. After the bank received the first reports about the incident last Friday, its investigation revealed that around six of its ATMs had been fitted with skimming technology, and that up to 1,214 ATM cards had been duplicated as a result of the fraud scheme.

The bank blocked on Wednesday 2,000 ATM cards originating from Jakarta as a preventive measure. The bank's latest report shows that the bank had issued 11.59 million debit cards as of March.

The figure was higher than the 10.44 million recorded in March last year, and up from the 11.39 million recorded in December 2013.

In the first quarter of this year, the lender's ATM transactions stood at Rp 192.6 trillion, up 8.6 percent from the same period in 2013.

BI, which is responsible for payment systems in Indonesia, issued a regulation in 2009, which stipulates that all debit cards must be equipped with chip technology by Dec. 31, 2015, at the latest. (dyl)