Oh Tong Keong welcomes the idea of Credit Card Alert System proposed by Bank Negara in response to the arrest of 7 postmen who were found to have stolen chips from credit cards and made over a few million ringgit of illegal transactions. Oh believes that once this proposed idea is implemented, the card holder will be more protected. The banks will also be able to carry out immediate investigation and terminate the card whenever any cases of credit card theft happen in order to avoid further losses caused to the bank and the cardholder. With this, Oh hopes that the safety measure could be implemented the earlier the better.

Oh says, “No doubt that this safety measure is an effective means to detect misusage of credit card, however it is still not the ultimate solution to preventing credit card theft, it is merely an alert system. The banks and the cardholders are still at a loss when credit cards are stolen and misused.”

He says credit card application usually takes around a week or two to process from the date of application. After which successful applicants will get their credit cards by post, which is where the credit card could fall into the hands of a third party. He is curious whether the idea that banks process the application and issue a credit card to the applicant on the spot is feasible. He believes that the chances of credit card being stolen could be greatly reduced by using this method because the credit card will reach the cardholder directly without needing get through the hands of a third party.

Oh Tong Keong has a second suggestion, which is to remove the cardholder’s signature and safe code from the back of the credit card. Now that credit cards could be used to do online transaction, all it takes is to provide the card holder’s information and the safe code for the transaction to be approved, and needless to say, the safe code is right behind the credit card itself. Whereas for the removal of the signature is to prevent the credit card stealer from forging the signature of the card holder.

Oh Tong Keong believes that misusage of credit card can be reduced if the cardholder’s signature and safe code are removed from the back of the credit card. He also suggested that the need for a PIN be imposed on usage of credit card to proceed with the transaction, meaning, those who makes payment at the counter will need to key in their PIN in order for the transaction to be approved. For certain the idea of using PIN for credit card is the same as using PIN for ATM card where the cardholder should remember the PIN and not jotting it down on any pieces of paper.

Oh Tong Keong reinstated that the Credit card Alert System using sms is a brilliant idea and should be implemented the earlier the better. However, it will require a much more tighter and comprehensive safety measure as he suggested above to prevent credit cards from being misused.

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