Axis Bank credit card users affected by fraudulent transactions: report

Several customers with Axis Bank credit cards affected by overseas fraudulent transactions

Mumbai:

Several customers with Axis Bank credit cards were affected by fraudulent transactions from overseas, a senior official of the third-largest private sector bank said today.

Sanjeev Moghe, head of cards and payments at the city-based bank, said customers had witnessed unauthorized transactions since Tuesday night, receiving certain low-value payments made on some e-commerce sites. Purchased transaction alerts.

Moggi said there was “no data breach” on the bank’s part and claimed that the size of such transactions was very limited and that customers’ data was safe and secure.

Amid growing discussion on social media about such unauthorized transactions, Mr Mogg said the bank’s internal mechanisms had blocked some transactions, but added that many customers had been affected.

The bank’s credit card customers spend around 5 billion rupees a day, Moghe said, adding that the size of such transactions was “very small” in comparison.

Asked for more details, he said it was a small portion of total spending, adding “we’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars spent.” He also hinted that such incidents had been happening for a day and had stopped.

Fraudsters obtained a number of card numbers and matched them with expiration dates to conduct unauthorized transactions, he said, explaining that since these were international transactions, they could do so without any second factor of identity. This is done without verification, such as a one-time password or even a CVV number sent via SMS or SMS.

Asked how the fraudsters obtained the data, he said the first six digits of the 16-digit number were bank-specific, adding that the card number could be obtained when the card was provided for payment at petrol pumps or restaurants.

When asked if other banks had experienced similar situations where their customers’ credit card numbers could be obtained in a similar way, Mogg said he was not immediately aware of it.

Axis Bank is replacing credit cards for affected customers and recovering debit amounts, Moghe said, adding that this was not a blow to the bank.

He said the Reserve Bank had been informed of the incidents and the bank would have to consider strategies such as audits to avoid such incidents in the future.

Axis Bank shares closed 0.50 per cent lower at Rs 1,048.30 apiece on the BSE on Thursday, while the benchmark gained 0.90 per cent.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)