Apple Mistakenly Deducts Money from Users’ Accounts

The Hungarian National Bank (MNB) reported “payment related problems with Apple” on Tuesday. The case of Apple mistakenly deducting money from its customers’ bank accounts is not new, as such a disruption related to Apple Pay also happened in the summer.

The MNB said in a statement that it had contacted payment service providers and initiated measures to protect customers. They say that “most banks are better prepared than before and have taken immediate action to ensure customer safety. According to primary, as yet unconfirmed data, far fewer customers are affected by the disruption than in the past.”

As reported by Hungary Today, a similar disruption in Apple Pay happened earlier this summer. In late June, Apple Pay wrongly deducted money from a number of Hungarian users. While some people had only HUF 899 (EUR 2.27) deducted, others had their balance reduced by HUF 550,000 (EUR 1,391) in dozens of transactions in five minutes. The Hungarian National Bank (MNB) at the time said that a total of 780,000 unauthorized debits worth more than HUF 2 billion (EUR 5 million) were made.

Index reports that one of their readers had HUF 550,000 debited in 74 transactions in 5 minutes and then had his card blocked by his bank.

Usually, the amount of previous Apple subscriptions or purchases made via Apple Pay was charged again.

According to the news site, Apple was also informed of the incident, but only sent a list of the transactions involved in the incorrect charges to the financial institutions issuing payment cards after a considerable delay. The institutions forwarded this information to the banks, that took action to return the amounts deducted.

In addition to the MNB, the Hungarian Banking Association (Magyar Bankszövetség) also reacted to the incident in a statement, pointing out that “on the night of September 30, due to a technical error, Apple’s app store (Apple Store) repeated the debiting of items that had been previously debited but not yet settled financially, i.e. Apple initiated the collection of the current monthly payments of subscriptions twice in some cases.” It is understood that

the current technological glitch is an international problem affecting cardholders in some 20 countries.

Affected Hungarian cardholders may encounter temporary double-debiting of their existing subscriptions, but financial settlement has not been achieved at any point, it was noted.

Apple Mistakenly Refunds User HUF 254 million