The visa card company has informed Republic Bank Limited that online fraudsters have been engaged in what is known as a “brute-force” attack on holders of the Republic Bank Visa One card.

Republic Bank explained in a statement today that the attack uses a trial and error method to obtain payment card information for card holders within seconds.

The fraudsters would be able to get information on the account number and expiration date of the card and that information could be used to make payments for online purchases without the card holder having any knowledge.

The bank said while many of the attempts by the fraudsters failed, some were also authorised and that resulted in the accounts for those customers’ being debited.

The bank reminded the unusual activity was detected by its monitoring systems, and in order to reduce the opportunity for fraudsters to continue the attack, the Bank in collaboration with VISA implemented additional authorising measures.

The bank stated that the temporary measures have resulted in some legitimate online transactions being blocked and customers who experience difficulty in attempting online transactions using their VISA OneCard should contact Customer Support on telephone numbers1-800-271-4725 or 1-868-625-1200

The company said efforts are being made to obtain a toll free number in the shortest possible time frame.

Some cutomers have complained that the bank blocked their cards without informing them and now they are forced to spend their money to call Trinidad and Tobago for customer service.

The fraud was detected a few months back after several customers started to complain about deductions from their accounts for online purchases that they were unaware of.

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