Bank Card Crime Research

A bank card is an electronic payment card issued by a commercial bank or other financial institutions, which has all or partial functions of payment, credit, transfer, settlement, cash saving and withdrawal, whose nature is a specific form in the evolution of currency. It shall be protected by criminal law as currency in the criminal statutes and criminal judicial practice.　The development of bank cards in China Mainland underwent the process of being from quasi-credit card, debit card to credit card. With the prosperity in the industry of bank cards, crimes involving bank cards are getting more and more rampant. The crime involving bank cards hereof means a criminal offence which forges bank cards or use bank cards, including credit cards and debit cards, to commit other criminal offences, breaking the administrative order bank cards and infringing the public and/or private property. These criminal offences include credit card fraud, bank card forgery and bank card larceny, etc.　The provisions on crimes involving bank cards under the Criminal Code of China Mainland are fairly comprehensive compared to the criminal laws of other countries, but the divarication on these provisions causes the insufficient usage of legal resources in the Criminal Code. It is of great importance to unify the opinions and eliminate difference. In the author's opinions, although the provisions under the Criminal Code of 1977 version uses the wording of "credit card crimes", but actually the "credit card"thereunder shall have the same meaning of bank card as under Rules of Bank Cards Administration. The primary protected object of crimes of bank card fraud is the financial administrative order of bank cards, and its secondary protected object is the public and/or private property, therefore "credit"is selected as the secondary protected object in this crime. In the fraud offences of unauthorized use of other persons'bank cards, it is necessary that other persons'bank cards shall be lawfully issued and still valid, but if the actor mistakenly thinks the bank card is valid and unauthorized use the card, it will also constitute the offence of unauthorized use of bank card. In the bank card fraud through malicious overdraw, the element that "the actor still do not return the overdrawn money upon the urge of issuing bank"shall be construed as the reliable, confirmative fact the actor holds an intention of unlawfully possess other persons'property is not a necessary element of malicious overdraw. According to the provisions of Criminal Code, the act of altering a bank card is actually not existed in strict meaning, which can be classified as a kind of bank card forgery. To obtain a credit card with false information in application and commit the act of malicious overdraw with this unlawfully received card is punishable as the crime of credit card fraud. The yardstick of accomplished offence in crimes involving bank card adopt the theory of "delivery". In some offences of bank card fraud, although it does not meet the quantitative standard of relatively large amount while meets the quantitative standard of the ordinary crime of fraud, it is still punishable as the ordinary crime of fraud. 　Although the provisions on bank card crimes under the Criminal Code of China Mainland are comparatively comprehensive, the author considers that there is still some room for the improvement of these provisions. Firstly, it shall expressively define the criminal liability of attempted offence in bank card fraud; secondly, it shall separately provide the crime of abusing credit card; thirdly, it shall improve the provision on bank card larceny; fourthly, it shall amend and improve the act types in bank card crimes, and crack on the up-sourcing crimes of bank card crimes; at last, it shall additionally provide the legal entity as the subject of these crimes.