While Ahmad Maslan was explaining the Ministry of Finance’s efforts to combat financial scams at Dewan Negara yesterday, Senator Mohd Hisamudin bin Yahaya interjected to raise concerns about the usage of debit cards. He claims that the rise of debit cards may lead to data breaches and scams while implying that it is less secure than Touch ‘n Go cards.
The Senator said most people these days tend to use debit cards at car parks in shopping malls instead of Touch ‘n Go cards. He explained Touch ‘n Go card doesn’t involve our bank accounts but when we use debit cards, there’s a concern that some unknown companies are collecting our money. He said these are not government agencies that we can trust.
He added that when we “touch” our debit cards, the companies will “book” RM10 or RM20 and after that, it will charge RM3 upon exit. He said he is worried that if debit cards are used extensively, they will take consumer data and they themselves will become a scammer. Mohd Hisamudin said they can easily obtain the data and consumers felt safer with Touch ‘n Go because it wasn’t linked to an individual’s account.
Deputy Finance Minister Ahmad Maslan simply responded that he agrees with the Senator while emphasising that we all must be careful. He said nearly 22,000 people had become victims of scams with estimated losses of approximately RM850 million. He added that everyone must be careful especially with their payment cards which could be accessed via malware.
It appears that the Senator is not well informed about how debit cards work especially with contactless technology like Visa Paywave and Mastercard PayPass. As explained countless times while debunking paywave myths, only a registered business or approved merchants can process card payments. When a contactless card is tapped, your information is encrypted and the embedded EMV chip will generate a dynamic code for the transaction to be completed. A contactless card transaction won’t reveal your personal details such as your bank’s username, password or mobile number, so the claim of data breaches from debit cards is not true.
On top of that, all card transactions are recorded and this allows consumers to report disputes for unauthorised payments. If you lose your card, you can easily freeze or report it as missing from the card’s app. With the rise of mobile payments, there’s also Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay that use the same technology for contactless payments.
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