The SA Banking Risk Information Centre says it is now more vital that pensioners are made to understand that accessing their money using debit cards, will lessen the risk of them being easy targets.
There has been a string of armed robberies at pension payout points in KZN and Gauteng this week in which a total of 10 people - nine of them pensioners - were wounded.
In all cases, the suspects made off with cash.
SABRIC's Kalyani Pillay says while it's understandable that some elderly people prefer receiving their pensions in cash, they're making themselves easy targets for criminals.
"They need to be able to protect themselves knowing that criminals will always look for ways and vulnerabilities to try an compromise them. As inconvenient as this may be, we have to take these precautions" she said.
