Several customers with Axis Bank credit cards have been affected by fraudulent foreign transactions
Mumbai:
Several customers with Axis Bank credit cards have been affected by fraudulent transactions abroad, a senior official of the third largest private sector lender said today.
Sanjeev Moghe, head of cards and payments at the city lender, said customers witnessed unauthorized transactions as of Tuesday evening where they received transaction alerts about certain low-value purchases made on some e-commerce sites.
There has been “no data breach” at the bank, Mr Moghe said, asserting that the scope of such transactions is very limited and customers’ data is safe.
Amid increasing chatter on social media about such unauthorized transactions, Mr Moghe said the bank’s internal mechanisms have stopped some transactions, but added that many customers have been affected.
The bank was witnessing spending of about Rs 500 crore per day by its credit card customers, Mr Moghe said, adding that the size of such transactions was “very small” in comparison.
When asked for more details, he said it is a small portion of the total expenditure and added that “we are talking about thousands and lakhs”. He also hinted that such incidents have been happening for a day and have now stopped.
Fraudsters have accessed a few card numbers and linked them to the expiration dates to carry out the unauthorized transactions, he said, explaining that since these are international transactions, they can go through without any second factor authentication, such as a one-time password via SMS or even the CVV number.
When asked how the fraudsters can get the data, he said the first six digits of a 16-digit number are bank specific, adding that the card numbers can be retrieved when the card is given for payments at petrol stations. pumps or restaurants.
Asked if other banks have also experienced similar cases as their customers’ credit card numbers can also be picked up in a similar manner, Mr Moghe said he was not immediately aware of it.
Axis Bank will replace the credit cards for affected customers and refund the amount debited, Mr Moghe said, adding that this is not a blow to the lender.
The Reserve Bank has been informed about the incidents and the bank will have to look at strategies such as audits to prevent such incidents in the future, he said.
The Axis Bank scrip closed 0.50 per cent lower at Rs 1,048.30 apiece on the BSE on Thursday, against a 0.90 per cent gain on the benchmark.
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