Bank admits old-style ATMs easier for scams

WESTPAC admits it is easier for criminal syndicates to set up multi-million-dollar card- skimming scams with older-style EFTPOS machines.

WESTPAC has admitted that it is easier for international criminal syndicates to set up multi-million-dollar card- skimming scams with older-style electronic funds point of transfer (EFTPOS) machines

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The bank's chief product officer, Jim Tate, told a Senate inquiry in Sydney that he expected the incidence of card skimming to get worse.

Mr Tate told the Senate Economics Reference Committee public hearing on small businesses' access to finance that banks had a responsibility to keep people's accounts safe.

"The second element is to ensure the data feed from each terminal is quick and gets up through our fraud process quickly," he said.

Mr Tate said newer EFTPOS terminals were of a "much higher quality" than the older ones.

"Monitoring is also improving . . . but the level of fraud is also improving, so we're kind of chasing one another at the moment."

Independent senator Nick Xenophon, a member of the committee, said later that tough anti-skimming laws should be introduced and he called on the major banks, which provide EFTPOS machines to businesses, to invest in updated fraud prevention programs.

"Banks have to do everything possible to ensure that small businesses and customers aren't being ripped off," Senator Xenophon said.

"If it means investing more money in hi-tech fraud prevention programs, then so be it. The banks can well afford to do it."

An EFTPOS card-skimming scam netted more than $50 million in NSW earlier this year, with every Australian capital city and some regional centres hit by the scam.

Overseas criminals are replacing older model EFTPOS terminals with compromised card-skimming versions that can be used to drain personal bank accounts.

AAP