Two days after suspending all online payments following an attack, Tesco Bank in the U.K. has resumed full service and bank officials say they have refunded about £2.5 million to customers affected by the incident.
The exact nature of the attack on the bank’s customers still isn’t clear, but last weekend many Tesco customers reported that significant amounts of money were missing from their accounts. The amounts ranged from a few hundred pounds to several thousand, and by Monday Tesco officials made the decision to stop all online payments from customers’ accounts in an effort to contain the incident.
“We apologise for the worry and inconvenience that this has caused for customers, and can only stress that we are taking every step to protect our customers’ accounts. That is why, as a precautionary measure, we have taken the decision today to temporarily stop online transactions from current accounts,” the bank said Monday.
“We’ve now refunded all customer accounts affected by fraud.”
Late Tuesday night, Tesco restored online payment service and said that it had refunded all of the money missing from customers’ accounts. The bank said that approximately 9,000 customers were affected by the attack.
“We’ve now refunded all customer accounts affected by fraud and lifted the suspension of online debit transactions so that customers can use their accounts as normal. We’d also like to reassure our customers that none of their personal data has been compromised,” Benny Higgins, Tesco CEO, said in a statement.
Bank officials say they still are investigating the fraudulent transactions, but Higgins said earlier this week that the company knew what had happened. Tesco said that no customer information was compromised in the incident.
Image: Cristiano Betta, CC By 2.0 license.
