MobiKwik reports Rs 19 crore missing from its account, says users money safe

Gurugram-based digital wallet firm, MobiKwik, has reported missing of over Rs 19 crore from its account and filed an FIR, reports TOI.

According to the company, the money was allegedly deducted from the firm's own corporate account during online transactions made by individual customers using the wallet for recharge, bill payment, shopping etc. Mobile wallet firm lost total Rs 19.61 crore over the past three-and-a-half months.

“We detected a financial discrepancy on the company by some unidentified persons. We reassure that our users data and money is safe and secure and is not compromised and also payment gateway transactions are safe and secure with strong firewalls. We have taken immediate action by lodging FIR with Gurugram police cyber cell for criminal investigation and to punish the culprits,” Mobikwik said in a statement to Entrackr.

This came to fore during a routine internal audit recently, following which the company lodged a complaint at Sector 53 police station on Wednesday and the cyber crime cell began an investigation into the matter.

MobiKwik in its FIR alleged that some netizens transferred money from the wallet to different accounts. Prima facie it seems to be a technical glitch, according to the police.

In July, MobiKwik wallet integrated with Samsung Pay Mini to enable one-tap payments at more than 1.4 million MobiKwik-powered merchants.

Launched in March this year, Samsung Pay is the feature given by Samsung, in flagship phones- like Samsung S8, Samsung S7 Edge, S7, J7 Max and J7 Pro among others.

Meanwhile, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) issued a consultation paper which calls for developing a framework for security of digital wallets operating in India. At present, there is no big step taken in this regard.

Financial cybercrime in India has been steadily increasing over the years. For the year 2015-16, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reported 16,468 cyber crimes related to ATM, debit card, credit card and net banking frauds. The number of frauds reported by the RBI were 13,083 in the year 2014-15 and 9,500 in the year 2013-14.

Recently, digital payments have garnered significant traction after the government’s decision to ban high-denomination notes in November 2016. Wallet firms like Paytm and MobiKwik have witnessed noticeable growth in number of users as well as volume of transactions on their platforms.