Customers in Visa Card fraud must be fully refunded – Bank Governor

Bank of Guyana Governor, Dr Gobind Ganga has declared that all customers affected by the Republic Bank Visa Card scam must be refunded in full.

His comments come just days after reports surfaced that the commercial bank would only be refunding customers for unauthorised transactions done in the last three months.
“That is something that we wouldn’t tolerate. If there is a fraud, it doesn’t matter how long that fraud is dated back. Republic Bank or any bank would have to ensure that the customers receive his/her appropriate refund,” Dr Ganga told reporters on the sidelines of an event Monday.
A local newspaper has reported that customers are claiming that the Bank has only offered to reimburse transactions within the last three months. However, in some cases where customers were scammed, their monies were utilised from transactions dated back longer than three months.
Republic Bank Guyana admitted in a statement on May 15, that its Visa international debit cards were compromised. This was after days of customers taking to social media to complain about missing monies from their accounts.
An investigation has since been launched, and the Bank has assured customers that it would beef up its security.
The Central Bank Governor said he would also be meeting with the management of the Bank to ensure the situation does not occur again, or if it does, better mechanisms would be put in place to deal with the issue.
“We will be working with the commercial banks to ensure that the Guyanese public are afforded the opportunity to transact business almost risk-free,” Dr Ganga noted.
One customer who had reached out to Guyana Times explained that he visited the Vreed-en-Hoop, West Coast Demerara branch to do a transaction, but he received a notice saying there were insufficient funds to honour the requested amount. He said this prompted him to conduct a balance inquiry and to his astonishment his account only had $9000. The customer said that he was left speechless, since he was aware that his account had over $140,000.
When he visited the Bank to make a report, he was given a dispute form to fill out. He said that he was advised by the teller that the investigation process for such a claim takes between 60 and 90 days. He said that he was also informed that the matter has to be investigated by the Bank’s Trinidad branch.
The customer expressed dissatisfaction with the response by the Bank, adding that when he enquired about reimbursement, he was not given positive feedback.
Meanwhile, another customer said that he too was left shocked when he realised that $2 million was missing from his account. He said an inquiry revealed that money was deducted from his account to pay for several online purchases.
Another customer said that she went to the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) and found that $60,000 was missing, so she went right away to the Bank. She said she too was given a dispute form to fill out. The young lady slammed the Bank for not being honest with its customers about the hacking incident.
Republic Bank, after its initial statement confirming the issue, has not provided a public update on the investigation.
However, the financial institution had advised customers to be more careful when shopping online and had urged them to better monitor their cyber activities.
“The Bank also takes this opportunity to remind customers of the need to be vigilant when using their debit cards and monitoring their account activity.”