The Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) is warn­ing cus­tomers to be care­ful when us­ing their bank cards to pay for de­liv­er­ies, as it is one of the main meth­ods used in card skim­ming in this coun­try.

“BATT wish­es to ad­vise the pub­lic that the banks are aware of the re­cent Point of Sale (POS) skim­ming in­ci­dents and have en­gaged their stake­hold­ers and the Fraud Squad who are con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” a re­lease stat­ed yes­ter­day.

“The banks have been ad­vised that the POS skim­ming in­ci­dents are oc­cur­ring in two main ar­eas - at de­liv­ery trans­ac­tions and over-the-counter sales.”

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the TTPS re­ports that the Fraud Squad had doc­u­ment­ed over 60 re­ports of card skim­ming be­tween Au­gust 3-5, 2020, with close to $300,000 be­ing stolen from vic­tims.

BATT yes­ter­day cau­tioned cus­tomers to be aware of cer­tain prac­tices when con­duct­ing trans­ac­tions with de­liv­ery sales and cus­tomer sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives at stores.

When it comes to de­liv­ery trans­ac­tions, BATT stat­ed, “The first at­tempt of the trans­ac­tion may fail, and the de­liv­ery rep­re­sen­ta­tive may ask you to hold on and re­trieve a sec­ond ter­mi­nal from the ve­hi­cle to swipe your card again. Or in some in­stances may ask you to pay cash when the trans­ac­tion failed as it may ap­pear the ma­chine is not work­ing.”

BATT said it is “strong­ly ad­vis­ing” cus­tomers to take note of the trans­ac­tions in de­tail, in­clud­ing the date and time, ve­hi­cle num­ber of the de­liv­ery dri­ver, rep­re­sen­ta­tive name and re­port the trans­ac­tion to the bank im­me­di­ate­ly and/or to the com­pa­ny from which the item was pur­chased or ser­vice used.

“Cus­tomers can al­so choose to dis­con­tin­ue the trans­ac­tions if you are un­com­fort­able,” BATT stat­ed.

When it comes to Over-the-Counter trans­ac­tions, it said trans­ac­tions may ap­pear to be le­git­i­mate but it was ad­vis­able to keep an eye on the card at all times. BATT al­so re­mind­ed cus­tomers to cov­er the key­pad when punch­ing in their pin num­bers.

“Do not al­low the CSR to leave with your card. Pay at­ten­tion to the val­ue on your re­ceipt as it may be in­flat­ed. Record and re­mem­ber every de­tail of your trans­ac­tion and how it is be­ing processed,” it stat­ed.

BATT said it recog­nis­es this is a part­ner­ship and is count­ing on its cus­tomers and stake­hold­ers to fol­low these guide­lines to help fight against fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty.

“BATT mem­bers have im­ple­ment­ed var­i­ous ser­vices, tech­nol­o­gy and in­tro­duced prod­ucts to help com­bat deb­it card fraud - no­ti­fi­ca­tions/alerts, chip card tech­nol­o­gy, etc. Banks re­main com­mit­ted to keep­ing their cus­tomers safe,” it said.

“It is im­per­a­tive that cus­tomers re­port any sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions im­me­di­ate­ly to their banks or bring it to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ty of the par­tic­u­lar es­tab­lish­ment.”