ATMs to shut down during these hours

Hyderabad, July 05: Cyberabad Bankers have made an inclination to shut down ATM centers during off-peak hours, that is, between 11 pm and 6 am.

The bankers have agreed to the police report at the Police Commissionerate's high-level meeting to deploy ATMs at night for lack of administrative burden and low transaction.

However, the final decision will be taken by the chief executives in the matter. Representatives of all private and public sector banks participated in the meeting.

The coordination meeting at the Cyberabad commissionerate in Gachibowli was held on June 30, and attended by representatives of several banks, including the Reserve Bank of India, State Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI, and Ratnakar Bank.

Police officers have suggested that ATMs be closed in the night time to control cyber crimes. About 95% of ATTs in less than 5 transactions are located in remote areas.

The shutdown is in order to prevent the misuse of ATMs by criminals who chose off-peak hours to insert skimmers to steal customers’ data and make fraudulent transactions.

"ATMs with less than five transactions during off-peak hours will be identified by the banks and the services of such centres will be halted. The off-peak hours are the times chosen by the fraudsters to commit offenses," said sources close to the Cyberabad police.

In the month of May, cybercrime sleuths arrested two Romanian nationals, Vasiel Gabriel Razvan and Buricea Alexandru Mihai, in Mumbai, and recovered 196 cloned cards and `35 lakh withdrawn fraudulently from bank accounts.