17000 Credit Cards Blocked by ICICI Bank for Data Breach

ICICI Bank has blocked 17,000 credit cards after a technical glitch in its mobile banking application ‘iMobile’ led users to complain about being able to view other customers’ card details, including co-branded cards.

According to a bank spokesperson, the technical issue resulted in new credit cards being incorrectly assigned to existing customer accounts when viewed online. This means an existing customer might have been able to see details of a newly issued card meant for someone else, but not vice versa.

Imagine logging into your online banking portal and seeing details of a credit card you never applied for! This is exactly what happened to some ICICI Bank customers.

A number of users took to social media platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) to post about being able to access the card details of other customers including the complete card number, expiration date, and CVV. The glitch also allowed users to adjust the settings for these cards, such as enabling foreign transactions or changing of spend limits.

In response, ICICI Bank said that about 17,000 new credit cards which were issued in the past few days were “erroneously mapped in our digital channels to wrong users”. These cards constitute about 0.1 per cent of the bank’s credit card portfolio.

This incidence came into picture when Reserve Bank of India (RBI) took an action against the Kotak Mahindra Bank, restricting bank from acquiring new customers via online and mobile network and issuing new Credit cards.