Johannesburg - Banks warned on Wednesday that card skimming was still prevalent and urged customers to be more cautious.
The CEO of the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric), Kalyani Pillay, said that preliminary information from the banks suggested an increase in incidents of card skimming during the holiday season, despite banking industry's concerted efforts to warn clients.
"It must be qualified that at this stage, we are unable to publish exact industry figures in this regard as the data is still being analysed," she said.
However, it is important that the public is alert to prevent further incidents, especially since the volumes of card transaction are not expected to decline significantly at this time," Pillay said.
Hundreds of millions of card transaction are recorded in South Africa annually and more and more bank clients are using cards to make payments.
Sabric said that the skimming of cards is not a new trend, and occurs when the encoded information on the magnetic strip of a legitimate card is copied for fraudulent purposes.
The stolen information is usually used to manufacture counterfeit cards or used to make purchases that do not require the physical presentation of the card.
Card skimming incidents are happening around ATMs and any place where perpetrators are able to have access to a client's card, such as at pay points.
While the skimming of cards with hand held devices is still most commonly used other methods include sophisticated devices attached to ATMs which are difficult to detect.
This meant that consumers had to be more careful in protecting their cards, she said.