BANGKO Sentral ng Pilipinas will not impose any sanction against BDO Unibank Inc. for card skimming incidents reported in June, saying the country’s biggest bank has been complying with banking regulations.
A high-ranking Bangko Sentral official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters BDO had been following the regulations of the regulator. “… They are doing something about it. They are complying with BSP regulations, so no sanction,” the official said.
“The report has been submitted and maybe you can put it this way: The bank is compliant with the requirements of the BSP. They’re able to address it at that time,” the official said.
BDO in June received reports of potential automated teller machine fraud through card skimming. The bank advised customers with unauthorized transactions to reach out to the bank through formal channels so that their cases might be properly investigated and deserve reimbursement.
But the bank said the incident was nothing out of the ordinary, adding ATMs were compromised every now and then. It said banks took the precautionary measure of disabling cards if there were reasons to believe they might have been compromised.
BDO also assured the public that it exerted all efforts to protect cardholders and their transactions.
Posts on social media, espoecially on Twitter, said a number of depositors lost money possibly due to card skimming or copying of the details of accounts through hijacked ATM machines.
These incidents occurred one week after Bank of the Philippine Islands on June 7 suspended access to its electronic services after an internal processing error that resulted in transactions from April 27 to May 2 being double-posted.
BDO has over 3,000 ATMs nationwide, conveniently located in malls, department stores, hypermarkets, hospitals, transport terminals, convenience stores, fast food outlets, hotels, gasoline stations and selected corporate offices.
In a Senate hearing earlier, Edwin Reyes, Transaction Banking Group head of BDO, said the bank planned a total upgrade of its ATM machines by the fourth quarter this year. Reyes said BDO already upgraded over 1,000 of its ATM machines located nationwide.
BDO last week urged clients to shift to Europay Mastercard Visa-chip debit cards to make sure they were protected from any fraudulent activities, such as card skimming.
BDO said the shift to a safer EMV card was the first step to a wider protection of accounts against fraud usually carried out in electronic banking channels.