How some Axis Bank credit cards became fraud targets

livemint.com:

₹40,000 after forex conversion). Vasani was not the only Axis Bank credit card holder targeted that day. There were many others, all Axis Banks customers, who were victimized by a series of international fraudulent transactions .

The lender, in an official statement, claimed that it was a malicious attempt from certain foreign merchants and averred that there was no breach of its systems. “There has been no data leak. Some of these transactions are in the nature of random attacks on certain credit cards," the bank said.

To be sure, the malicious attempt by foreign merchants implies that hackers had misused the card details to carry out payments on foreign merchant sites and that the merchants themselves did not attempt the fraudulent transactions. In interactions with Mint, some cardholders reported that they had received several one-time-passwords (OTPs) for transactions that were not initiated by them, while others said transactions on their cards were unauthorized and went through without their receiving an OTP, a numerical code sent by text messages for cardholders to authorise a transaction. Kashif Ansari, assistant professor at Jindal School of banking and finance, O P Jindal Global University, said customers do not usually get any OTPs for online international transactions so these are more susceptible to frauds.