Private and public banks in India cancelled up to 50,000 credit cards they issued in September and October after local law-enforcement agencies discovered a widespread cloning scam.
The police department of Chennai, capital of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, unearthed the cloning scam and shut down a series of credit card rackets in the city over the past two months, according to a statement from the department.
The arrest of two Indian nationals who allegedly committed card cloning alerted police to the scam, the statement noted.
“Our investigations found that cloning had been carried out on cards issued in the months of September and October and that this was done to cards from across banks and cities in the state,” the statement said. The department did not explain why the cards issued during those two months were targeted.
Police informed the region’s public and private banks to track and cancel suspicious cards issued in September and October. The banks in response decided to cancel all 30,000 to 50,000 credit cards they issued in the region at that time.
“We decided to cancel cards because it costs us lesser financially to issue a new card than to keep track of our cards in the market and whether they are being misused,” a spokesperson for the Central Bank of India tells PaymentsSource.
The police statement did not disclose the names of issuers that might have cancelled credit cards, but local media reports noted that SBI Cards Pvt. Ltd. and ICICI Bank Ltd. were among the banks to do so.
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