If you’re an Apple Pay customer in Hungary watching your bank account being drained by rogue card transactions, you’re not alone.
Various emerging reports overnight from the nation indicate that a ‘technical issue’ with several banks has seen many customers incorrectly charged by Apple’s App Store. As reported by both Telex and Index, some customers have lost nearly $1,500 due to the issue, which took hold overnight Wednesday.
“Several of our readers reported that Apple Pay performed several transactions unexpectedly and without any reason,” Index reported. Purportedly, the issue is affecting “almost all banks”, and one reader was charged upwards of HUF 550,000 (nearly $1,500) in 74 transactions over five minutes. Banks including OTP, Erste, and Raiffeisen have all reported the issue.
Hungary Apple Pay Saga
“We inform our customers that due to a technical problem with an external partner, the bank cards of some of our customers may have been incorrectly charged by the Apple App Store,” Raiffeisen said in a statement on its website. “Our colleagues have contacted Apple officials, the problem is being resolved.”
Index reports “hundreds of complaints” have been sent to the outlet, reiterating that this seems to be quite a widespread issue. “Apple's deductions also started for me, HUF 80,000 was deducted from my card in 8 transactions within 20 minutes before it was blocked,” one reader told the outlet. Interestingly, other readers reported that the rogue charges they were seeing appeared to be related to service subscriptions they had previously stopped, indicating this could be some kind of App Store glitch on Apple’s end. Fortunately, plenty of users seem to be reporting that their cards are being blocked after a couple of payments, making the unfortunate 74-transaction case above an outlier.
As it stands, it seems banks and likely Apple are still investigating the issue, we’ve reached out to the company for comment.
