Govt Urged To Get Tougher On Credit Card Fraud

The Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) on Monday said the government isn't going far enough to tackle credit card fraud, warning that regulations introduced last month have failed to fix the problem.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) received 229 complaints regarding unauthorised credit card transactions in the first quarter of this year, reaching 60 percent of the total number in 2022.

The FTU said many cases involve victims' information being stolen via phishing attacks and their credit cards then being linked to mobile payment apps.

The HKMA issued regulations in April making banks require additional authentication when cards are linked to apps, rather than just asking for a one-time password.

But FTU lawmaker Bill Tang said this new step is not enough to protect cardholders.

"[The issue] is not completely solved... For e-wallets, for example Apple Pay and Google Pay, actually the Hong Kong government and the HKMA don't have monitoring mechanisms," he said.

Tang also urged the HKMA to tell banks to create a function in their apps for customers to cancel their credit cards and stop all transactions immediately, saying at the moment, the procedure is not easy and can take too much time.