After a long wait, Lidl Pay also started in Germany in April of this year. But no sooner has the discounter’s payment service established itself on the market than fraudsters are already on the scene. And the cases are increasing.
Pull out Lidl Pay on your smartphone at the counter of the discounter, pay, go home. It should be that simple with Lidl’s in-house payment service and make carrying cash or a wallet superfluous. But as easy as payment is, fraudsters can also gain access to Lidl pay accounts, as the supermarket blog reports.
More and more cases are becoming known in which criminals hijack a payment account and pay with someone else’s account themselves.
LIDL PAY WITH MISSING SECURITY STANDARDS
Unlike in other countries, such as Spain, payment in Germany at Lidl Pay works via the Sepa direct debit procedure instead of a credit card . According to the reports, it is therefore possible to save a third-party account in the app instead of your own. And fraudsters take full advantage of this loophole. Where the account details come from is unclear, according to the supermarket blog.
Pull out Lidl Pay on your smartphone at the counter of the discounter, pay, go home. It should be that simple with Lidl’s in-house payment service and make carrying cash or a wallet superfluous. But as easy as payment is, fraudsters can also gain access to Lidl pay accounts, as the supermarket blog reports.
More and more cases are becoming known in which criminals hijack a payment account and pay with someone else’s account themselves.
The reason for this possibility is the lack of security standards. Lidl claims to check new Lidl Pay accounts. But this check is apparently carried out within a few seconds. Further measures, such as two-factor authentication or a test booking, are not carried out. Most mobile payment services use this procedure before a new account is activated.
POLICE CONFIRM FRAUD
The Berlin police also confirmed the scam and reported more and more victims since June 1st. The right account holders will initially consider Lidl’s bookings to be a mistake if, for example, they are not a Lidl customer. Ultimately, however, they get their bank to fetch back the debits, which with some delay a debt collection company steps in and issues a warning about the missing payments.
As it is also said, the direct debits cannot be used to determine where the purchases were made. In addition, the fraudsters get a time advantage, as the booking is only recorded a few days later – even if the respective accounts are already blocked at the time.
WHAT CAN YOU DO AS A VICTIM?
According to the supermarket blog, Lidl does not want to change the Lidl Pay payment system in the future either. However, if a case of fraud is confirmed, the discounter wants to stop the collection reminders with immediate effect. The police advises those affected, however, to report inexplicable debits and to arrange for the money to be reversed via the bank.
