Credit card mail theft on the rise in Singapore
More credit and debit cards sent through the mail are getting stolen while on their way to the target recipients, according to retail bankers.
Speaking to The Sunday Times anonymously, one banker said he has observed a 20 percent increase of such cases this year compared with last year.
Another banker noticed that card mail thefts started to increase sharply last year as well.
From the start of this year alone, one bank officer estimated that some 200 bank cards have been stolen in the mail.
Just recently, eight bags of mail were stolen from a SingPost mail transit room in Choa Chu Kang on 20 July.
Usually after the cards, both new and replacement ones, had been sent from the central post office to the different regional mailrooms around Singapore, the thieves would strike.
Some would also know how to intercept secret personal identification numbers (PIN) sent separately in the mail after a few days. The thieves would then take out cash from ATM machines with the card and PIN.
According to a bank officer, this happened in a recent case after thieves hijacked mail going to the Punggol, Sengkang and Serangoon areas.
Some have suggested that banks should use registered mail to prevent such thefts from happening.
But it is too expensive and it does not ensure safety either.
In a Straits Times Forum letter last month, some cards sent out via registered mail were also intercepted, said Mrs Ong-Ang Ai Boon, director of The Association of Banks in Singapore.
Banks have chosen instead to have security measures such as alerting users via SMS when their new cards are first used, or making customers use their phones to verify the cards before they can start using them.
Still, it is estimated that fraud cases due to cards stolen in transit are relatively low at less than 0.01 percent, according to the association.
The stolen cards are usually used to buy items in shops, and usually in Malaysia to avoid detection.
According The Sunday Times, police from the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) are in talks with banks to discuss the issue.
The problem has also been raised with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), which is in charge of postal services.
