Yes Bank and BookMyForex refute data breach concerns amid fraudulent transactions

India’s Yes Bank says it is investigating thousands of unauthorised overseas transactions on Indian customer’s foreign exchange cards that inflicted losses of about $280,000 on 5000 customers.

 

The private banking institution responded to multiple customer complaints over unauthorised transactions on their Multi-Currency Prepaid Forex Cards, which the bank issued in partnership with BookMyForex, an Indian online marketplace for foreign exchange and international money transfers.

 

The Multi-Currency Prepaid Forex Card is a prepaid travel card that lets users carry out transactions in over a dozen countries in local currencies without paying any mark up fees, issuance, reloading, unloading or annual charges. The card was designed for frequent international travelers, including tourists, business professionals, and students to help them carry out transactions in various countries without needing multiple cards. 

 

Earlier this week, a large number of prepaid forex card users took to social media to voice concerns over unauthorised international transactions on their cards and over their inability to get their cards blocked through BookMyForex to prevent further fraudulent transactions. The concerns gave rise to fears about a significant data breach that possibly gave malicious actors access to users’ financial information.

 

On Wednesday, February 26, Yes Bank said in a press release that it recently detected thousands of unauthorised transactions carried out on 15 merchants based in a Latin American country, with the transactions occurring between 3:30 AM and 8:30 AM on February 24.

 

The bank said that the fraudulent transactions totalled about $280,000 in value and impacted as many as 5,000 customer cards. The fraudulent transactions occurred due to the absence of mandatory two-factor authentication for e-commerce transactions in the Latin American country. "As a security measure, the bank has subsequently restricted e-commerce transactions from the specific Latin American Country," Yes Bank said.

 

"Due to the Bank’s monitoring and control mechanisms, 688 unauthorised transaction attempts were declined, which led to safeguarding of approximately equivalent to USD 0.1 MN. The Bank is working with Card Network to raise chargeback to ensure that the impacted customers do not face any financial loss.

 

"YES BANK remains committed to the highest standards of data security and customer protection. The Bank continues to closely monitor the situation and is working with all relevant stakeholders to ensure customer interests are safeguarded," it added.

 

BookMyForex also refuted concerns over suffering a data breach that may have led to the flurry of fraudulent transactions on prepaid forex cards. "There has been no data breach involving BookMyForex systems or customer data. YES Bank observed unusual volumes of false transaction attempts on YES BANK - BookMyForex Multi-Currency Prepaid Forex Cards which resulted in high number of declined transactions," a spokesperson said.

 

"These transactions, when analyzed, were found to originate from a specific country. The Bank has blocked transactions from this specific country which was identified as the source of all these attempts....We continue to closely monitor the situation, working closely with the bank to take necessary steps towards customer protection," they added.