AIB Credit Card HC*HC CHARGE fraudulent transaction, wider issue?

Hi all,

AIB texted me to say that a suspicious transaction had been made by the above company on my AIB CC. Googling it it does indeed seem to be a scam that started in the US and is now affecting other countries. I tried calling AIB as instructed but was on hold for 15 minutes before I hung up, which I must say I never experienced before so I am wondering, is this a larger data breach affecting many AIB CC holders? Anyone else affected? Fair play to them for preventing the fraud but it would be nice to get through to them to (presumably) order a new one as this one has been compromised obviously.

I've now called them a second time and have been on hold for 30 mins and the on hold message says they are experiencing a higher than usual demand. I think a lot of people may have been hit with this.

Cheers.

Possible but Unlikely. If it were widespread, they would probably blanket ban them.

It’s hard to get through usually

Are you able to suspend your card temporarily via the AIB app? I know that's a feature on some online banking apps.

I was on hold for well over 1.5hrs which is pretty poor for a normal response time. The very nice woman on the end of the phone sorted me out though. Card cancelled as expected and new one will be sent out in tomorrow's post. Anyway, I believe the company behind this is US based (Delaware) and so regular travellers to the US may get hit by it and if it's not on AIB's "global" radar as a scam then they might allow it on those cards so one to watch out for perhaps. Yep, you can temporarily block AIB cards on their app but in my case the bank did this itself due to the suspicious activity.

It's nothing to do with travelling. Fraudsters buy list of card numbers and details on the dark web.

Banks are getting better at detecting these in fairness, as someone who manages merchant accounts, we get daily reports of fraudulent transactions from AIBMS, sometimes there is nothing on there, other days there can be from all over the world. USA and Central American banks and issuers seem to be quite weak in this regards

I don't mean you get hit because you travel, I mean the bank may not detect the fraud if you travel to the country & region where the fraudster is based as to the bank's algorithm, it's expected for that card to have charges in that country & region. My AIB card was last in the US a decade ago so I guess a random transaction from a Delaware based firm triggered some fraud detection algorithm but if my card was regularly getting charged by east coast based US firms, maybe nothing would have been triggered. So it's one to keep an eye out for I reckon, especially for those that do travel regularly to the US.

Irish times reporting that AIB phones hit by a technical hitch

Another user on boards reporting the same fraud alert on his An Post MC. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Can't see how someone could blame a specific bank when it seems that it's cards from many banks located all over the world that have had this issue. Looks like it started a few months ago in the USA and then spread to Canada and Australia and now the UK and here.

I say fair play to aib for being proactive as it seems some card customers of US banks have had to wait weeks for refunds.