My dad lost ₹85,000 in a credit card scam - this is a part of a much bigger problem
Last week, my father fell victim to ₹85,000 in unauthorized Flipkart purchases on his Axis Bank credit card. No OTP, no shared details. The money vanished.
Axis Bank's response? "File a dispute. Wait 90 days. Pay your bill meanwhile."
This isn't isolated. It's happening everywhere, to everyone, right now.
Our modern financial system is a scammer's paradise. Tap-to-pay, digital wallets, one-click purchasing – all designed for convenience, but at what cost?
Every "innovation" that removes friction for legitimate customers creates opportunities for fraud. Contactless payments without PINs. Express checkouts bypassing verification. Auto-saved details across countless apps.
Yet the burden of proof falls entirely on victims. Banks default to approving transactions, not questioning them. They've calculated that seamless payment profits outweigh fraud costs – costs they pass to customers.
My father, who's never shared his card details with anyone, who checks his statements regularly, who does everything "right," is now expected to:
- Prove he didn't make the purchase
- File police reports
- Submit endless documentation
- Wait 90 days
- And still pay the bill in the meantime
The system is designed to exhaust you into giving up. Most people can't afford to spend weeks navigating complaint portals, appealing to banking ombudsmen, or pursuing legal action. The banks know this.
Why are we racing to adopt every new payment method without equal investment in security? Why do UPI, tap-to-pay, and digital wallets launch with fanfare while fraud protection remains stuck in the early 2000s?
I'm left wondering - who is this system actually designed to protect? When banks roll out contactless payments but take 90 days to investigate fraud, their priorities are clear. When fintech companies boast about transaction speed but offer minimal recourse for scams, the message is obvious.
What good is paying with your watch if your life savings can disappear in seconds? What's the point of instant transfers if disputing fraudulent ones takes months?
If you've experienced something similar, you know the helplessness. The system that moves money instantly somehow needs three months to verify you've been robbed.
The system is fucked and rigged.
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I always set a transaction limit for all my cards (debit/credit), incase of high value purchase increase it for that moment and decrease it again as soon as done. Turn off international transactions, tap to pay, atm withdrawal if not in use. Icici mobile app has a good UI so its relatively easy and convenient to do it.
Yes but the question here that comes is how financial institutions handle any cases of fraud - the redressal mechanism is a pain and the SLAs are against the consumer.
I've worked in fintech and understand that these investigations take time - but expecting anyone to pay up the bill in a disputed transaction is exploitation.
What option does one have here? Either pay the bill and keep chasing them for an update/reversal or not pay and mess up your CIBIL. Both cases, the consumer is one who loses.
Went through that when a fraud happened with me on Home Loan. raised issue to rbi ombudsman and got it resolved. i would say send an email follow up once a week. Wait for 30 days, if not resolved raise it to ombudsman.
After seeing what happened to my dad, I've been researching a technical approach that could help catch these remote card frauds.
The core idea is surprisingly simple: create a secondary verification channel that's completely separate from the card network.
When any transaction occurs, the system would:
- Compare it against historical merchant patterns
- Check for velocity inconsistencies (multiple purchases in short timeframes)
- Analyze merchant reputation using crowdsourced fraud reports (figuring sources for this)
- Calculate a risk score based on transaction amount, time, and merchant category
The tech would interface directly with bank APIs (where available) or use account scraping (where not) to detect transactions in near real-time, often before they fully settle.
What makes this different from current bank alerts is the focus on pre-settlement intervention. There's typically a 24-48 hour window between authorization and settlement where quick action can still reverse charges without the full dispute process.
Right now I'm figuring out a proof-of-concept, will be using a simple ML model trained on anonymized transaction data.
The technical challenge isn't detecting fraud after it happens - it's catching it in that critical window where intervention is still simple.
Just sharing thoughts in case others are working on similar ideas. This won't solve every scam, but it might give people like my dad a fighting chance..
Recently filed a dispute complaint against a transaction on HDFC card. First thing I was informed that no payment to be made regarding disputed transaction, until final resolution.
Seems to be an Axis specific policy
RBI mandates that banks can't charge you for disputed/fraud reported transactions. @RapidLeverage06 Are you sure that's what Axis asked you to do? Make sure you formally report the transaction as fraud in written via email, specific forms Axis may have. Oral discussion with customer support doesn't matter.
I don’t believe this. How can a transaction happen without OTP?
It happens. In my case it had happened with foreign transactions. At that time for transactions on foreign portals, sms didn’t use to trigger. Not sure how it happens in this case, but most likely it would have involved some International transactions somehow (is there some indirect way via flipkart?)
Could be a phishing link was clicked or some app. Otherwise there’s no way @RapidLeverage06 shed some clarity here? How did this happen?
Usually credit card has policy of instant refund in case complaint is filed within 24 hrs. So it is like, refund first, and investigate later. I had done so with CitiBank credit cards. Another person has posted the same here about HDFC Bank credit card too. In fact that dispute mechanism is what makes credit card, such a safe thing to use, doesn’t work for debit cards. Wonder why Axis Bank doesn’t have that policy in place; you should try reading policy, comparing it with other banks’ policies on credit card and in case of discrepancies, lodge Banking Ombudsman complaint
Ya, I mean eventually I'm sure we'll figure out a way to get it back - my point here being the problem with the redressal process
Just too many payment methods now - gives scammers a lot more avenue to do shady shit
I am curious about the details of how it happened.
It's still unclear, he got a message on a Thursday morning - saying 85k-ish spent on Flipkart; he called me asking if I ordered something
Within 10 minutes we reported it to Axis Bank and got the card blocked - they said they'll investigate and get back
In parallel, got FIRs done and reported to cyber crime department also
This happened to me but the amount was 5.5k. Most probably your international transaction was set to on. In case of an international transaction, no OTP or any other authentication is required.
Report to your bank and they will provide you a shadow balance. Then file a complaint in cyber cell and give the acknowledgement number to your bank. It will be sorted quickly and you don't need to pay anything extra.
Exactly. It must be some sort of International transaction. Only question is, how did it happen via flipkart
