BankIslami restores electronic banking

KARACHI: BankIslami Pakistan has restored all its electronic banking services after the bank upgraded the system’s resilience to safeguard its customers.

BankIslami on Monday said the bank’s payment system has successfully been restored and running “absolutely secured”.

“All of the bank’s services can now be accessed and operated as usual including other banks’ ATMs (automated teller machines), internet banking and mobile app,” the bank said in a statement.

“Thus, our customers can now access all other banks’ ATMs for cash withdrawal and BankIslami’s nationwide ATM network for funds transfer, utility and other bill payments.” In late October, a cyber attack hit the shariah-compliant bank, prompting the regulator and the financial sector to call for more investment in financial technology. The bank later blocked all its overseas transactions.

BankIslami detected certain abnormal transactions valuing Rs2.6 million on one of its international payment card scheme. The transactions of approximately six million dollars as claimed by an international payment scheme were not acknowledged by the bank as the bank actually logged off from the international payment scheme at that time, the bank said in a bourse filing then. It said the compromised amounts were credited into its bank accounts.

BankIslami said it will soon restore point of sales services. “At BankIslami, customers’ safety holds utmost priority; hence we used all our avenues to ensure that none of our valued customers suffer any loss whatsoever. Meanwhile, our teams have been in continuous correspondence with our customers and keeping them well informed of the situation all the way through,” the bank said in the statement. The bank appreciated its customers’ firm faith throughout the period and reassured that it has put in place all the measures necessary and upgraded the system’s resilience to safeguard the bank and its customers.

A Moscow-based anti-fraud firm the Group-IB said payments cards of at least three Pakistani banks were hit by yet another cyber attack on November 13. Data of more than 150,000 plastic cards of the banks were put on sale on an underground dark net.

The Federal Investigative Agency said data of most of the banks were hacked. The central bank, however, rejected the reports, saying no breach was reported except in case of BankIslami.