Close to 39 account holders of State Bank of India across Gujarat’s Mehsana, Patan and Ahmedabad districts were in for a surprise when they cancelled their online orders on Flipkart. The bank deposited double the cancelled amount in their accounts, according to a DNA report.
The money was once credited on the day of the cancellation and credited again a few days later.
Some of the customers realised they received double credits for their cancellation. The purchase and transaction took place last year when the bank lost more than Rs 7 crore from 1,090 transactions in 39 accounts.
Apparently, most of the customers were students, who advised their friends and family to follow the same procedure.
In online transaction cancellations earlier, buyers got their refund from merchants manually after receipt of funds and advice from payment masters like MasterCard, Visa or Rupay. Visa later came up with a new online refund project, where money was credited directly to the customers.
The plan was floated on a pilot basis, in five bank identification numbers (BIN). A BIN is a four-digit number that uniquely identifies the institution issuing the card. The manual refund process was discontinued and the new project was extended.
This issue arose due to the overlap of the old and the new system—the customers got their refunds from the merchants as well as the banks. SBI treated the case as a fraud and the investigation is underway.
According to a report issued by SBI, during December quarter, fraud cases in the bank have hiked by 40 percent and the amounts involved in these cases surged by 324 percent.