Barclays Bank Zambia hit by ATM fraud

atmThe workers under the Information Technology (IT) department of Barclays Bank Zambia are being investigated after unknown people allegedly tampered with the bank’s automatic teller machine (ATM) control system and fraudulently withdrew large sums of money.

The bank suspects the fraud occurred in one of its branches in Kabwe and was an in-house job that aided by IT department workers.

This has made Barclays Bank Zambia to disable all Visa cards of account holders with the branch. The bank has further asked the account holders to apply for new Visa cards.

It is not clear yet as to how much money was fraudulently withdrawn although the suspected tampering of the ATM control system reportedly took place on Friday last week when salaries of civil servants had just been deposited into their accounts.

A number of the bank’s depositors who went to withdraw their money and salaries said they were inconvenienced by the development as the majority of them had no transport money to go back to their homes.

They also complained that the bank asked them to apply for new cards, but that the majority of them had left their required identity cards at home.

Credit: ItWeb Africa