A large number of Axis Bank Credit Card holders are finding their credit card accounts under siege at the moment. Over the past 24 hours, I’ve been subject to numerous attempts to get an unauthorised charge on my card in what could be a brute-force attack on Axis Bank Credit Cards. Social media is lit up with several card members whose accounts are either charged or attempted to be charged.

My @AxisBank Reserve Credit Card was used too without my permission and without OTP for two transactions at Air France. Registered a complaint and Axis says they need 90 days to investigate. Emailed them and got the same templatised response. https://t.co/snft4SpXQm

— Aadil Bandukwala (@aadil) March 26, 2024

Disable all transactions on your Axis card immediately!!
I had an international transaction attempted on my Magnus Card for 50₹ but failed because I had already disable it. Looks like a breach from some third party https://t.co/Xvo9BbzrvS

— Vaibhav (@angrykabootar) March 26, 2024

Same happened to me last night pic.twitter.com/0vy1vSZjbi

— Old Monk (@shyamprakash0) March 27, 2024

There are a tonne of these instances on X/Twitter. My Axis Bank Magnus Card was also affected, having received an attempt to charge INR 45 in the wee hours of March 26, 2024, and then about 14 attempts to charge the card from some international servers at about 10 PM on March 26, 2024. Fortunately, I keep my Axis Bank Credit Cards with the international transactions closed, so these did not go through.

Axis Bank Credit Cards under attack

Credit card fraud is not new, and everything that happened last night to me or others has happened before. Some banks deal with it better than others; that’s it.

In this case, the source of the leak isn’t clear, given that all these transactions seem to be happening only to Axis Bank Credit Card customers (in this round). For instance, I’ve only seen cases of Axis Bank Magnus, Reserve and Vistara Infinite Credit Cards. The high-end cards of Axis Bank might have been compromised by one of their partners with a data leak, maybe? From there, they somehow land up on the dark web, and now someone wants to see if they can make money on their USD 100 buy of the data. This means the hackers are even trying to test card accounts that are already closed (so you might get a text about an attempted transaction on a card you might have closed).

To round up the picture, it is definite that this is not a BIN Number Brute force attack because while I’ve been getting these attempts over the past 24 hours (leading me to block the card eventually), this hasn’t touched my wife’s Axis Bank Credit Card at all. So, the hackers have a database, and they check out which card numbers work before they move to the next database.

What to do?

First, if you are an Axis Bank customer, you should use their app to turn off all international transactions (until you need to use the card internationally). This option is available on the app in the “Control Centre” for the card.

 

Now, you also need to monitor your SMSs and emails closely. If the transactions don’t go through, that is fine. If they slip through, like the INR 5000 transaction posing as YouTube earlier in one of the screenshots, Axis Bank will decline the transaction if it looks suspicious, or if not; it will still call you or text you or both to get a confirmation about the transaction. If you deny the transaction was made by you, your card will be blocked, and then you have to call them to get a new card issued.

If a transaction looks authentic enough and slips through, make sure to call and file a dispute as soon as possible. You can call them to file the dispute or use this form. I’ve had to make a couple of disputes with Axis Bank Credit Cards over the years, and they are usually pretty quick in instating a temporary credit and subsequently charging back to your account.

Bottomline

Axis Bank Credit Cards seem to be at the centre of a data breach from some party, and the leaked credit card numbers are being tested. So far, the leaked numbers are from the Reserve and Magnus Cards, largely. The suggested course of action is to keep your international transactions locked unless you need them. And once shut, keep an eye on any suspicious transactions. If one of these sails through, please file a dispute with the bank right away.

Have you had any experiences of your own about your Axis Bank Card being attempted to be charged by unknown people over the past few days? 

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