Posted By: Roshni Agarwal
As government has been fast gearing to promote digital payments to boost cashless transaction, the problem of banking transaction fraud is on the rise. And to safeguard the interest of banking customers who despite all the necessary precautions are exposed to such threats have been provided a safety net by the banker to the bank.
To again make it a point such that bank customers are thorough with the liability they will have to bear or not, the RBI in its annual report released on Wednesday has notified limiting liability of customers in case of illicit or unauthorized e-banking transactions.
To begin with there are three facets to this framework, which have been summarized below:
1. Zero liability: The banking customer is not liable to bear any loss in case the deficiency is on the part of the banker or neither the bank nor customer but due to a third party outside of the system. However, the illicit transaction should be intimated to the banker within a period of three working days from the transaction date.
2. Limited liability: There arises a liability if the fault or negligence is on the part of the banking customer and in fact the entire loss has to be borne by the customer himself. And in case the unauthorized transaction is executed due to some entity outside of the system and reported to the banker with a delay of 4-7 days, the liability of the customer ranges from Rs. 5000 – Rs. 25,000 and is dependent on the nature of instrument and account type.
3. Liability as decided by the board approved policy: In case the loss due to unauthorized transaction is intimated to the banker after 7 working days, the liability of the customer is dependent on board approved policy. The shadow reversal or the credit of the amount involved in the transaction will have to done within a period of 10 working days. Also, the banks thereafter need to resolve the complaint as well as come up with the customer’s liability if any within 3 months of the registration of the complaint by the banking customer.
