Damage from Aeon Card Fraud in Japan reaches 9.9 billion yen

Such fraudulent transactions have been on the rise since last spring, affecting several tens of thousands of Aeon Card users, according to the financial arm of retail giant Aeon Co.

Aeon Financial is working on compensating for the damage. It expects to book 9.9 billion yen in extraordinary losses for the business year that ended last month.

The company said that it has almost completely stopped any new illicit transactions from being conducted through the measures already taken.

"We sincerely apologize for our failure to promptly stop the spread of unauthorized credit card use and act quickly in our response to customers who suffered damage," President Shunsuke Shirakawa told a press conference.

Credit card information stolen from phishing websites was registered on the Apple Pay iD contactless payment service on smartphones.

Credit card companies usually deactivate iD accounts if requested to do so by credit card users who hold the accounts.

Criminal groups, however, abused a function enabling offline payments of less than a certain amount. The groups repeatedly made small-sum payments using the service offline.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]

Photo by Reuters