Banks’ responsibility to prevent Online Bank Fraud

Banks must ask their customers to mandatorily register for SMS alerts for electronic banking transactions. Wherever available, they must ask their customers to register for e-mail alerts, for electronic banking transactions.

The SMS alerts shall mandatorily be sent to the customers, while email alerts may be sent, wherever registered in the event of an electronic banking transaction. To facilitate the customers to report any unauthorized use of their electronic banking services, banks must provide customers with 24×7 access through multiple channels (at a minimum, via website, phone banking, SMS, e-mail, Instant Voice Response, a dedicated toll-free helpline, reporting to home branch, etc.) for reporting unauthorised transactions that have taken place and/ or loss or theft of payment instrument such as card, etc. Banks have to also enable customers to instantly respond by ‘Reply’ to the SMS and e-mail alerts so that the customers are not required to search for a web page or an e-mail address to notify the objection to an electronic transaction.

Banks have to also provide a direct link for lodging the complaints, with specific option to report unauthorised electronic transactions on the home page of their website. The loss/ fraud reporting system should ensure that immediate response (including auto response) is sent to the customers acknowledging the complaint along with the registered complaint number. The banks must record the time and date of delivery of the alerts and receipt of customer’s response, if any.

The banks cannot offer the facility of electronic transactions, other than ATM cash withdrawals, to customers who do not provide mobile numbers to the bank. On receipt of report of an unauthorised transaction from the customer, banks must take immediate steps to prevent further unauthorised transactions in the account.