Shorten the validity period of credit cards

I REFER to “Online insecurity” (Sunday Star, Oct 19) which reported the issue of insecurity of online bank transactions.

Other than the measures mentioned in the article, our banks must also play their part to enhance the security measures to minimise the fraudulent transactions.

The credit cards issued by banks range from one year to three years or more depending on the arrangement, and for debit cards, there may not be limitation of its duration as far as there is balance of cash available for transactions.

Frequent change of passwords for Facebook accounts or e-mail may prevent unscrupulous access by unauthorised sources. The duration of the validity on all credit cards and debit cards should be reduced.

The long validity period creates opportunities for our cards to be used without our knowledge.

Thus banks should seriously consider reducing and shortening the validity period of all cards.

CHONG HAI YONG

Penang

Published in The Star on 21st Oct 2014