1.2 Million Reasons Why Chip And Pin Security Matters

When it comes to banks, they’ve not had the best of luck. Gone are the days where a bank heist involved someone walking in with a balaclava and a big brown bag ready to stuff their pockets with notes. These days you lose your money to someone sitting behind a keyboard, with banks as big as the bank of Bangladesh getting hacked with millions being transferred in just a matter of days. So what happens when you go the other way, instead of going high tech you use a companies lack of technology to steal the money? Sadly thanks to some ATM’s in Japan, a South African is wondering why people haven’t started using Chip and Pin technology sooner.

The theft is reported to have happened on the 15th May and took place in just three hours, resulting in a loss of around $12.7 million to South Africa’s standard bank. The police suspect as many as 100 people took part in the activity which involved counterfeit credit cards in ATM’s like those found in the many 7/11 stores around Japan. The reason they were able to get so much money in such a short space of time? The cards didn’t need the use of chip and pin, a feature that started rolling out back in 2006 while South Africa was introduced to the scheme back in 2005.

The end result has been a great loss to the bank, with card makers like Visa and Mastercard giving ATM owners until the 1st October in Japan to move to chip and pin enabled cards or take the risk of being held accountable for the fraud. With so much money being stolen on near weekly schedule with the bank of Ecuador being the latest in a lost list of hacks, why would you not take technology that can literally save you from having to pay back millions?