IT News on September 29th: A relevant official from MasterCard responded to Xinhua Finance today, stating that the issue of unauthorized transactions with Bank of China's MasterCard abroad has been resolved, and the safety of cardholders' funds is guaranteed. All current transactions are operating normally.
Since September 25th, users of Bank of China credit cards have begun to report on social media that they received alerts for abnormal transactions abroad on their Bank of China MasterCard cards, even though they had not left the country and the cards were not out of their possession. The transaction locations were mainly concentrated in Brazil, Uruguay, and other areas. A common factor among these cases was that the relevant cards had previously been linked to Apple Pay.
The cards involved are mainly from the Bank of China Great Wall Zhuojun MasterCard series. Some cardholders reported that the transaction records indicated a channel of Apple Pay, and the settlement currencies included Brazilian Reais, Paraguayan Guaraníes, etc. Some transactions were small amounts deducted in British Pounds. One cardholder had their account fraudulently charged a total of 11,404.68 Brazilian Reais (Note from IT: approximately 14,800 RMB), and this amount was refunded on September 28th.
On September 29th, several cardholders who had experienced fraud confirmed that they had received calls from the bank's customer service, informing them that the fraudulent transaction would be cancelled, and that they would not be required to repay the amount in question. The customer service also discussed the subsequent procedures for obtaining a new card.
Staff from the Credit Card Center of Bank of China told NBD that Bank of China and MasterCard are conducting an investigation. Official notifications will be issued once further results are available. Currently, they are actively following up on the matter, and some customers have already received calls regarding the handling of their cases.
Wang Pengbo, a senior analyst in the financial industry at Broadcom Consulting, analyzed that currently, the market speculates that criminal groups have figured out the card issuance coding patterns for certain segments of MasterCard numbers. Without obtaining user card information, they generate card numbers in bulk and successfully carry out multiple attempts at unauthorized transactions through overseas merchants with lax risk control. This type of unauthorized transaction is also known as a "database collision attack." However, the above analysis is merely a market speculation and not an official conclusion.
This is not the first time that MasterCard in China has encountered centralized fraud overseas. In September 2025, the "Invaluable World Card" jointly issued by Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and MasterCard also experienced centralized fraud overseas, with the incidents also concentrated in Brazil.
