Thai banks asked to help ATM skimming victims

BANGKOK, July 8 (TNA) – The Thai central bank instructed commercial banks to help customers falling victim to automatic teller machine (ATM) skimming frauds. ATM skimming made the headlines in Thailand once again following the spread of information that more than a dozen cash machines of Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Thailand’s second largest commercial bank by assets as of March 2017, were suspected of being scammed. The affected ATMs were situated in many locations, including in some subway stations and shopping malls, in the capital city of Bangkok, according to a document shared between banks for internal use . The news, which was widely spread on social media, prompted SCB to reaffirm that all of its ATMs remained fully safe to use and there had been no case affected by the skimming yet. The bank also pledged that customers if damaged by the frauds will be compensated within 72 hours. Bank of Thailand’s assistant governor Ronadol Numnonda said the central bank instructed banks to help the skimming victims and inspect their ATMs in order to ensure that the machines are free from scammers. He added that replacing magnetic stripe cards with chip ones should effectively help to lower the number of ATM-skimming victims in the country. (TNA)