According to Chinese media reports, last week the Songjiang District People's Court in Shanghai ruled against a local woman surnamed Zhou who sued her bank over 44,000 yuan ($7,163) which she claimed was illegally siphoned out of her account using a cloned card.

The court reportedly shot down the case after Zhou could not offer adequate evidence to prove that her bank card had been surreptitiously cloned - Zhou alleged that she had been in Shanghai and in possession of her bank card while her money was withdrawn from an automatic teller machine in Guangzhou. Reports go on to say that Zhou did not notice the transaction until two days after it occurred, at which time she turned to the police for help.

Going solely on what the media has written, I am not in a position to judge the court's call - but what I can say though is that the judiciary did make some rather odd remarks in its final ruling. To ensure the safety of their accounts, judges urged consumers not to use their bank cards at point-of-sales (POS) machines, exhorting them instead to use their cards to withdraw cash directly from bank machines.

Customers, banks, payment service providers and retailers should be doing everything within their power to push back against these recommendations, which insinuate that POS machines are unsafe. Moreover, many may interpret the court's ruling as a sign that customers who fall prey to cloning scams are on their own.

POS and card swipe payments are a booming business in China. Bank card payments have become de rigueur across China's crowded consumer market as retailers of all stripes endeavor to make the shopping experience more convenient. During the fourth quarter of last year, 2.74 billion card swipe payments were made for purchases totaling 6.3 trillion yuan ($1.02 trillion), up 44.7 percent and 48 percent respectively year-on-year, according to statistics from China's central bank.

Meanwhile, bank card swipe payments generated some 37.5 billion yuan in service fees during 2012, industry figures show. Under regulations issued by the central bank in 2004, 70 percent of these fees go toward commercial lenders, while third-party payment providers and UnionPay are eligible for 20 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Needless to say, any suggestion of untrustworthiness could have enormous financial implications for the entire industry.

Although telecoms fraud and wire scams are matters best left to law enforcement officials, banks should still be concerned about what cases like Zhou's might suggest about POS transactions. If card holders believe that banks won't go to bat for them if their accounts are illegally accessed, these institutions stand to lose their credibility with customers.

For the sake of their account holders, banks need to consider stricter monitoring and anti-fraud precautions. For instance, banks could offer customers the option of holding large money transfers or card payments until they can provide consent either in person or via mobile phone.

Of course, with central bank figures showing over 3.53 billion bank cards in circulation as of the end of last year - up 19.8 percent year-on-year and compared with 1.58 billion cards nearly five years ago - one could perhaps speculate that customers have been snapping up plastic without fully understanding the risks and responsibilities of bank card ownership. Ideally banks need to work hand-in-hand with account holders to cultivate responsible habits which benefit both sides.

The author is a business editor at the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn