PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Cred­it card fraud is on the up in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) has ex­plained this is main­ly due to a surge in on­line shop­ping post-COVID-19.

In a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Fi­nance and Le­gal Af­fairs, which ex­am­ined ex­ist­ing an­ti-fraud and cus­tomer pro­tec­tion sys­tems in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein not­ed there had been a de­crease in deb­it card fraud since 2020. How­ev­er, the re­verse ap­peared to be true based on 2023 sta­tis­tics with re­ports ris­ing from "a plateau in 2020" to 2700 cas­es in De­cem­ber 2023.

BATT Pres­i­dent Gayle Pa­zos ex­plained the in­tro­duc­tion of chip card EMV, that is smart chip sys­tems recog­nised by Eu­ro­pay, Mas­ter­card and Visa, had helped with in­stances of deb­it card fraud, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been ram­pant due to card skim­ming.

"The deb­it card fraud, you def­i­nite­ly are see­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­clines and that de­cline cor­re­sponds with the banks' roll­out of chip EMV. That has seemed to put deb­it card fraud in check, " said Pa­zos, who ex­plained that while skim­ming had been list­ed as a cy­ber­crime, in most cas­es lo­cal banks had seen such cas­es at ATMs as op­posed to on­line trans­ac­tions.

How­ev­er, she said cred­it card fraud sta­tis­tics shot up as those cards be­came used more fre­quent­ly for on­line pur­chas­es. 

"We came through the COVID-19 pe­ri­od, that would have been down be­cause peo­ple could not ac­cept their goods. There were no ship­ments of any­thing and then as things opened back up a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in on­line pur­chas­ing," said Pa­zos, who al­so added that the sta­tis­tics showed that the in­stances of fraud com­pared to the over­all num­ber of pur­chas­es was rel­a­tive­ly low.

"There is al­so a much larg­er in­crease in on­line pur­chas­es so the num­ber of pur­chas­es has in­creased sub­stan­tive­ly over this same time­frame and what you are look­ing at is mere ba­sis points if you look at the ra­tio of fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions to over­all trans­ac­tions," said Pa­zos.

BATT mem­ber Richard Down­ie ex­plained in most cas­es, these in­stances usu­al­ly oc­curred when card in­for­ma­tion was ob­tained via phish­ing and oth­er mea­sures. How­ev­er, he said in most cas­es, lo­cal banks were able to pick up on these cas­es quick­ly as card use in for­eign or strange in­ter­na­tion­al lo­ca­tions would be flagged in­stant­ly.

Dur­ing the JSC, BATT was al­so asked about mea­sures in place to com­bat cy­ber­at­tacks.

"Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and phish­ing and so­cial en­gi­neer­ing are big is­sues. All mem­ber banks do, with­in their own lev­els as well as with­in the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion, pro­mote many as­pects of build­ing aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion around how these schemes work. So we will be pub­lish­ing ei­ther through our var­i­ous LinkedIn and so­cial me­dia sites, In­sta­gram or Face­book, things that pro­mote and high­light the prac­tice of what peo­ple are do­ing. So ed­u­ca­tion is key. We con­tin­ue to do things to help raise the ed­u­ca­tion­al aware­ness around how these schemes work when there's a new scheme iden­ti­fied. We try to get that in­for­ma­tion out there to the gen­er­al pub­lic," said Down­ie.

The Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of Trinidad & To­ba­go was al­so present at the JSC and asked to present its con­cerns with re­gard to cy­ber at­tacks and fraud.

The Cred­it Union league al­so not­ed that due to the make-up of its mem­ber­ship in­stances of fraud were al­so low. The league al­so not­ed the need for greater in­for­ma­tion to com­bat the in­creas­ing threat of cy­ber-at­tack, not­ing that the league was cur­rent­ly guid­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er for Co-op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment on the is­sue. How­ev­er, the league not­ed that un­like banks, cred­it unions were of­ten guid­ed by its mem­ber­ship in terms of de­ci­sion mak­ing and as such called for stronger reg­u­la­tions to aid them with re­gard to these con­cerns.

BATT board mem­ber Nigel Bap­tiste said in most cas­es, the as­so­ci­a­tion was guid­ed by sug­ges­tions of the Cen­tral Bank, but not­ed most lo­cal banks had in­vest­ed in sig­nif­i­cant mea­sures to ad­dress fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty which in some cas­es sur­passed pro­ce­dures utilised abroad.

"The Caribbean is ac­tu­al­ly very, very low in terms of our fraud ra­tio per­cent­age rel­a­tive to oth­er coun­tries in the world, and Trinidad, rel­a­tive to oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean, is al­so quite low," said Bap­tiste, "In the Caribbean gen­er­al­ly, some of the met­rics that we have in place and the mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems that we have in place are bet­ter. And that's be­cause we try to avoid the fraud."