This bank loses its 'Axis' over fresh credit card scam!

If you use your credit card at petrol pumps or at restaurants, then, you should immediately become hyper aware, fraudsters may be keeping an eye on transactions that you make with your plastic cards at such places. They track such transactions to gain access to the information encrypted on your credit card. On gaining access to information encrypted on your plastic money, i.e. your name, credit card number and expiry date data, fraudsters can easily make payments on your behalf without gaining physical access to your credit card.

A similar scam has been unearthed with credit card holders of India’s leading private sector lender, the Axis Bank. A few of the lender’s account holders received messages that their credit cards were used to make international payments at various e-commerce platforms. This obviously, the holders had not done on their own. Scammers have managed to get hands-down data of their plastic cards and could initiate oversaes payments.

When, a senior official of the Axis Bank was contacted and asked how fraudsters managed to gain access to such encrypted information of credit card holders he said, “The card numbers can be picked up when the card is given for payments at petrol pumps or restaurants.  The first six digits in a 16-digit number are bank-specific. Fraudsters gained access to a few card numbers and matched it with the expiry dates to carry out the unauthorised international transactions.”

Conclusion can be drawn from what happened with Axis Bank credit card holders, that, first six digits can easily be guessed, and fraudters can easily get to know entire credit card number when used physically for transactions at outer places. Then, they can easily match the number with the expiry date mentioned on the card and enforce payments.

But here in this case, scammers could enforce only international payments as according to the Axis Bank official, there are two layers of security in making transactions with plastic cards. One is OTP and the other is CVV number. So, it would be comparatively difficult for fraudsters  to initiate domestic transactions with this much information. But here in Axis Bank’s case, they have managed to make international payments only. No instance of domestic payment has been reported.

Many of the bank’s customers have been impacted. Money got debited from their account when the fraudtsers used their credit card information to make payments.  But, the Mumbai-based lender credited money into their accounts. Plus, their credit cards have also been replaced.

The Axis Bank official said the lender processes over Rs 500 crore worth of daily credit card transactions.  The extent of such fraudalent transactions was “very small”. He also hinted that such incidents happened for a day, and have stopped.

But this has aroused speculations that credit card holders of other banks in the country could also fell prey to such scams. Plastic card holders could be vulnerable to such unauthorised international payments.  The Reserve Bank could soon come out with fresh guidelines  on this matter to protect customer interest.

Credit card holders tally has continuously increased in the country. More and more citizens are using the plastic money for making payments. According to the latest data, the number of credit cards issued in the country has recently gone passed 10 crore mark.  In such a scenario, it is imperative that holders must practise caution and should adhere to safety guidelines and instructions as announced by the RBI from time to time.