Banks have confirmed they will pay back money to victims of unauthorised online withdrawals of cash debited via plastic bank cards after a spate of unauthorised online transactions.

Payong Srivanich, chairman of the Thai Bankers’ Association (TBA), said the TBA has concluded with all bank members that banks would pay back money to the victims of these cases within five business days for debit card holders.

In the case of credit cards, the banks will cancel suspicious transactions and they will not demand interest or any fees from cardholders.

The banks will close the accounts of the credit cards used in these irregular transactions and open new ones for customers with no fee charged, he said.

During Oct 1-17, the fraud involved 10,700 cards, of which 5,900 are credit cards, accounting for transaction value of 100 million baht.

The remaining 4,800 are debit cards with the transaction value of 31 million baht.

The Bank of Thailand and the TBA on Tuesday also held a joint press conference on more details of the cases.

Siritida Panomwon Na Ayudhya, the Bank of Thailand’s assistant governor for payment systems policy and financial technology group, said the BoT and the TBA have jointly set guidelines for all banks to step up measures to prevent unauthorised withdrawals of cash debited through plastic cards.

According to the joint statement, the banks will have to step up monitoring of suspicious transactions by extending the monitoring to cover low value transactions and the highly frequent transactions made.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered urgent action to resolve the issue of irregular online withdrawals of cash debited through bank credit cards after complaints by many cardholders.

Police are stepping up their investigations into the cases.

More details at Bangkok Post