In the wake of a se­ries of thefts out­side of Au­to­mat­ic Teller Ma­chines (ATMs), Re­pub­lic Bank has raised it’s point of sales and e-com­merce trans­ac­tion lim­its for cus­tomers.

In a no­tice to cus­tomers last week, the bank con­firmed it had in­creased the lim­it for these trans­ac­tions from $10,000 to $50,000.

The no­tice to cus­tomers, which was sent last Fri­day stat­ed, “To fa­cil­i­tate greater ac­cess to your funds with your Re­pub­lic Bank Visa deb­it card, the dai­ly trans­ac­tion lim­it for Point of Sale (POS) and e-com­merce trans­ac­tions, cu­mu­la­tive­ly, has in­creased from $10,000 to $50,000.

“This means that trans­ac­tions done at Point of Sale ter­mi­nals and via e-com­merce, when added, can be as high as $50,000. For ex­am­ple, if a POS trans­ac­tion is $10,000, then an e-com­merce trans­ac­tion can be as high as $40,000 and vice ver­sa.”

How­ev­er the bank said the cur­rent with­draw­al lim­it would re­main at $5,000.

De­spite the change, the bank still en­cour­aged greater use of on­line bank­ing.

RBL said, “With the in­crease of the dai­ly trans­ac­tion lim­it, we en­cour­age you to sign up for on­line bank­ing, if you do not al­ready avail of this ser­vice, to en­sure that you re­ceive alerts every time your card is used at an ATM, Point of Sale or on­line.”

The an­nounce­ment came just over a week af­ter two more ATM rob­beries were re­port­ed, with $600,000 be­ing re­port­ed­ly stolen from out­side of an RBC ATM in St James on Fri­day, while an undis­closed sum was stolen from an ATM in Pe­nal last week Tues­day.

In a news re­lease on Ju­ly 13, the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT), ac­knowl­edged with great con­cern the in­creased risk be­ing faced by clients be­fore and af­ter they vis­it our branch­es and ATMs. The in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is of as much con­cern to BATT as it is for their val­ued clients, said the as­so­ci­a­tion, which groups the coun­try’s com­mer­cial banks.

“In an ef­fort to com­bat the uptick in these crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, BATT has strength­ened its co-or­di­na­tion ef­fort among all banks; broad­ened the in­ter­ac­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice; and is fi­nal­is­ing a part­ner­ship with Crime Stop­pers Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd with a view to mit­i­gat­ing and or man­ag­ing in­ci­dents of this na­ture col­lec­tive­ly and ex­pe­di­tious­ly,” said BATT.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so as­sured its clients that their safe­ty re­mained a pri­ma­ry con­cern of BATT “and while we en­cour­age clients to make greater use of our non-cash ser­vice op­tions, we are com­mit­ted to do­ing what we can to pro­vide a safe en­vi­ron­ment for clients who choose to avail of our cash ser­vices”.

In a po­lice press con­fer­ence on Ju­ly 2, it was con­firmed that more than $580,000 was stolen in 18 in­ci­dents up to that point of 2023 this year, while $509,245 was stolen in 25 in­ci­dents for 2022.

Dur­ing that brief­ing, it was con­firmed that in ten sep­a­rate in­ci­dents, peo­ple were robbed of $50,000 or more.