Globally, skimming is a growing menace and has taken shape in form of organized crime where felons  adopt to  tech savvy methods to siphon off monies from innocent  customer accounts. According to the Worldwide ATM Industry Association, ATM skimming is one of the fastest growing electronic fraud risk, which accounts  to more than $1 billion in annual global losses from card fraud and crime associated with ATMs.

The card industry in India has witnessed tremendous growth in the last decade with customer base of over 230 million cards. The evolution and advancement in technology has not only created a lot of dependability on cards usage but has also increased the risk of  fraud too. The growth of card issuance in India has also lead to  deployment of more ATM in recent times. Today the number of ATM in India stands at 75,178 with an growth rate of 30%. Moreover, RBI guidelines on free interoperability of ATM for cash withdrawals has given a new opportunity  to enhance more customer  usage with easy accessibility.

Recently, Indian banks have also witnessed attacks of ATM skimming resulting in increased concerns associated with ATM security, financial loss, reputation and impacting customer confidence and trust in tech savvy payment products. In last financial year there were incidents reported across Northern and Western India. In this incident some ICICI Bank cards have also been compromised. 

Definition : ATM Skimming in brief :

The illegal copying of magnetic strip data of credit or debit card issued by a bank via a card reading device while  capturing PIN through hidden camera or social engineering tactics and later card holder’s information is  transferred onto another card, often a piece of ‘virgin white plastic’ or other readily available plastic cards is called skimming. This counterfeit card is then used, in conjunction with the corresponding PIN, to withdraw funds at ATMs.