Public sector lender Union Bank of India will now allow its customers greater control over their credit cards through an app called UControl which will allow them to set limits and also block transactions. However, it seems that the application will only work for Union Bank cards (we tried signing up with an HDFC Bank card). Through the app, customers can block and unblock cards in realtime. It will also allow certain transaction channels to be to be blocked i.e. ATM withdrawals, Internet transactions, in store transactions and foreign transactions. It will also a customer to analyze spends through the cards over the last three months. Depending on the card uploaded, the customer can monitor and analyze their personal spends as well as that of dependants or joint cardholders. It will also allow customers to manage transaction alerts for payments made through the cards registered on the app. Although it isn't clear why Union Bank has not extended the feature to debit cards as well considering that they are more in circulation. At the end of the June quarter, Union Bank had 26.8 crore debit cards, while it had 142,221 credit cards in circulation at the end of March 2016. Rising fraud in banking Note that most banks allow cards can block cards and hotlist them through their net banking platforms. But there are very few which allow only certain transactions to go through specific channels. This could be helpful with the rising number of card frauds with online transactions. According to a Deloitte 2015 banking fraud…
