Although you may not want to believe, it’s true to life that scammers and other crooked individuals can withdraw your bank savings via ATM without needing to use your debit card.

Frankly, modern banking technologies make it convenient for bank customers to make withdrawals without the need for their debit cards. Unfortunately, scammers have taken the advantage of these technologies to devise a whole lot of strategies for comprising people’s debit card details.

A scammer who has gained access to your bank login details (particularly including your PIN) can make away with your hard-earned savings. Simply put, the scammer can withdraw your money from an ATM even without using your card.

So, what are the various ways a scammer can do this?

1.Skimming

Skimming, as a way of defrauding people, involves the use of a device (skimmer) that is capable of capturing the details of cards lacking EMV chips. In other words, some scammers understand that it isn’t all debit cards that carry EMV chips. Knowing fully well that such cards are prone to skimming, the scammers can easily use a skimmer to fetch the cards’ details.

A skimmer may be implanted in an ATM or POS owned by a scammer who is keen on defrauding bank customers whose debit cards that lack EMV chips.

2.Digital Apps

In desperation to defraud people of bank funds, some scammers capitalize on apps that function as digital wallets. So long as a scammer has got hold of your checking account details, he can use any of such digital wallets as Apple Pay, Paydiant, Google Pay, CashTapp, etc., to transfer money from your checking account to his own digital wallet.

For instance, the scammer can utilize the cardless cash feature of Apple Pay by creating an Apple Pay account and using your checking account details (including your credit card PIN) to withdraw your money into his own Apple Pay wallet.

3.Card Cloning by Unscrupulous Sales Persons

Crooked sales persons across high-profile stores can devise a strategy of using fake PIN pads to capture customers’ debit card information. They will then use the captured information to their own advantage rather than sending it to the customers’ bank (as required for processing transactions).

In other words, these pads enable dishonest sales persons to capture customers’ debit card details. Thereupon, they will create clones (false cards that appear as duplicates of the customers’ debit cards) and use the clones to make withdrawals from the customers’ bank accounts.

4.Through Your Bank App

Having access to your mobile banking app could avail a scammer the chance to dispossess you of your money. In this case, the scammer needs neither your debit card PIN nor your debit card per se. Rather, he requires only your mobile banking details.

What the scammer simply does (after finding out your bank app details and logging into the app) is transferring fund from your checking account (via your mobile banking app) to another account. Attempting to carry out this transfer, the scammer locates a nearby ATM stand with people willing to withdraw funds from an available ATM.

While at the ATM stand, the scammer seeks to transfer your fund to the account of somebody else, precisely an innocent individual who is normally one of those queuing to withdraw money from the ATM. This way, the scammer’s transfer (of fund from your own bank account) will not be traceable to the account of the scammer but that of the innocent individual.

Final Thoughts

While this article has exposed you to how scammers defraud people of bank savings without using the victims’ debit cards, you should note that there are several other tricks beyond the ones discussed in this article. Therefore, you should avoid careless disclosure of your bank login details.