Embedded systems

National Economy and Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis has called on banks to slash their charges once again.

From the stage of the Athens Innovation Forum 2024 on Thursday, he asked them to further expand electronic transactions, realizing, as he said, that "they operate in the context of a society with specific capabilities and that excesses harm them too."

National Bank and Alpha Bank are reducing commissions in selected categories of transactions.

The reductions also include the charges for direct remittances - i.e. those executed in real time - for which both National and Alpha announced the commission reduction up to a certain amount.

Banks are considering replacing fees for each transaction with monthly fees that will vary according to the package the customers use.

More expensive packages will come with more benefits, but, in any case, are planned to cost no more than 10 euros per month.

Bill payments and money transfers account for the vast majority of electronic transactions currently subject to a fee.

Ten years or so after the start of the huge expansion of credit and debit cards in Greece, the country seems to have locked on the use of "plastic money," lagging behind the modern trends of electronic payments.

All professionals belonging to the 35 branches of the Greek economy in which card terminals (POS) were not mandatory until now, have a deadline of 24 days to activate them.

The long-awaited decision of the Competition Commission for banks is expected to bring a reduction in the charges that are incurred when withdrawing cash from an ATM of a different bank to the client's.

Although the reductions will not be horizontal, it is estimated that they will bring about some relief in said charges, in the order of 25-30%.

A Thessaloniki court has sentenced two people to ten years' imprisonment for their role in an ATM skimming operation in which the data of at least 665 bank cards were stolen.

Skimming is a way of stealing PINs and other information off credit and debit cards by rigging machines with hidden recording devices.

The growing use of plastic money by Greek consumers for transactions in brick-and-mortar stores or e-commerce is strengthening the appetite of certain people for intercepting card details and embezzling larger amounts.

Russia launched a drone attack on Ukraine's southern port city of Odesa early Wednesday but there were no reports of casualties, authorities said.

"At night, the enemy carried out an attack by UAVs of the Shahed-136 type on the Odesa region," Yuriy Kruk, head of the Odesa district military administration, said in a statement on Telegram.

A 23-year-old man from Thessaloniki was convicted to 18 months in jail on Tuesday for stealing the credit card details of a lawyer to buy 10,250-euro-worth of goods from online shopping sites in 2020.