Citibank Australia to refund customers affected by credit card fraud

So far, the bank has refunded 4,000 fraud-affected customers, but the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) reported that another 39,500 customers will be paid, after Citibank failed to pay back the outstanding balance on closed credit card accounts.

The bank has refunded current and former customers after making misleading statements to customers about their rights, according to ASIC. These statements were made in letters sent out by Citibank between 2009 and 2016 in response to customers that made reports to the bank about ‘card not present’ unauthorised transactions from their accounts. Credit card fraud is increasing and card-not-present fraud accounted for 78% of total card fraud in 2016, according to the Australian Payments Network’s (AusPayNet) annual report released in August 2017.

The commission reported that, in the letters, Citibank refused customer requests to investigate the unauthorised transactions, incorrectly claiming the requests were made outside a time period specified by Visa and Mastercard, according to Canstar Australia.

Nevertheless, the authority concluded that if an unauthorised payment has been made on the customer’s account, they should be confident that their bank will appropriately investigate the payment.