On March 7th, 2025, amendments to the Penal Code were published in the Official Gazette (Decree 2-2025), which added the offence of cloning credit or debit cards. However, this crime had already been published in the Credit Card Act since September 1st, 2024.
The new offence is as follows:
"Section 327 "G". Credit or Debit Card Cloning
The crime of cloning a credit or debit card is committed by anyone who, without being duly authorized to do so, steals, copies, reproduces, records or alters the information contained in the magnetic strip or in the electronic, optical or any other technological means of identification of a credit or debit card, as well as any other means of electronic payment.
This crime is also committed by anyone who, without the consent of the person legally authorized to do so, prints or stamps, using any technology, an instrument with similar characteristics to a credit card, or in any other way falsifies a credit or debit card.
The person responsible for this crime shall be punished with six to ten years of imprisonment and a fine of one hundred and fifty thousand (Q.150,000.00 or US$19,500) to five hundred thousand quetzales (Q.500,000.00 or US$64,800)".
Confusion in the legislation
The crime of cloning credit or debit cards was originally introduced in the Credit Card Act (Decree 2-2024), passed in February 2024. This new version, published in Decree 2-2025, did not suffer any change in its wording, it was only moved to a new article within the Penal Code. This situation occurred due to a legislative error.
The error occurred because the crime of cloning was established under Article 327 "B" of the Penal Code. This article already existed and established an aggravating circumstance in terms of migration, and this aggravating circumstance was unintentionally removed. Therefore, Congress decided to create the new Article 327 "G" of the Penal Code, which establishes the crime of cloning and restores the aggravation for immigration crimes in Article 327 "B" of the Penal Code, which is what was published in Decree 2-2025.
The crime of credit or debit card cloning remains in force as of September 1, 2024..
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