Stung by the recent skimming scandals that rocked banks in Singapore, the country’s apex monetary authority says it is working with the financial institutions to safeguard their systems and operating capability.
In a statement given to the country’s parliament on March 8, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, deputy prime minister and chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said the agency has asked the banks to take prompt action to rectify any vulnerabilities or weaknesses in their systems.
Shanmugaratnam made his comments in response to a question raised by a parliament member over what measures were taken after the recent ATM skimming scandal. On Feb. 19, 17 DBS Bank Ltd. customers had SG$23,000 (US$18,348 or 13,900 euros) taken from their accounts by the same gang that skimmed almost SG$1 million from nearly 700 customers in January.
“This incident is not a result of any new skimming activity but a residual effect of the same card skimming operation that took place at the end of last year. DBS fully compensated all affected customers within 24 hours,” the bank said in a statement.
The authority has been working with the financial institutions since 2010 to strengthen payment card security, including the adoption of measures to reduce the risks associated with the use of magnetic stripe ATM cards, Shanmugaratnam said.
Following the DBS incident, the Association of Banks in Singapore in January said the industry would adopt the EMV1 standard in ATM cards to address the risk of card skimming, Shanmugaratnam said.
Implementation of the smart card standard will require infrastructure changes to the country’s ATM networks, which will take at least two years to complete, Shanmugaratnam pointed out. In the interim, banks are placing additional layers of security on their networks to protect their customers’ bank accounts, he added.
“These include disabling overseas withdrawals unless requested by the customer, text-message alerts for cash withdrawals above a certain threshold and replacing ATM cards that are assessed to be at risk,” he said.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore also is urging banks to implement such measures as soon as they can, even ahead of the industry’s target timeline where possible, said Shanmugaratnam.
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