Bank of South Pacific (BSP) will be reissuing new Visa debit cards to its customers following a recent attempt of fraudulent transactions.

BSP Cook Islands country head Chris Doran said that they could not disclose the number of customers affected, but they detected the issue immediately and impacted cards will be reissued.

Doran said they have contacted all impacted cardholders.

Emails were sent out to affected BSP customers on Friday, stating that there was an attempted fraudulent transaction recently involving their BSP Visa Debit Card where an unauthorised online transaction attempt was made on “STK*BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM”.

In the email, BSP stated that the transaction was intercepted and blocked by their fraud monitoring systems and confirmed that their customers were not charged.

BSP has now restricted online transactions for affected customers using Visa Debit Cards. But customers can still use their cards at the ATM and EFTPoS either be locally or overseas.

The bank has also ordered a replacement card and will notify customers when the card is available for collection.

Doran said: “This sort of thing happens occasionally. It’s obviously a website that targets this sort of thing.”

“They sort of do attacks on cards and generate random numbers. When they get hit, then they go from there. If you Google sort of in-range attacks, that’s what you’ll find.”

Doran reiterated “no money was lost”.

“We caught it straight away. The impacted cards, obviously, we need to reissue those cards. We contacted all impacted cardholders.”

Doran added that when customers use their cards online, they’re reliant on that website being secure.

He urged BSP customers to keep their card details secure and deal with websites that they know and trust.

If you have any questions, contact BSP on 22014 or email paymentssupportcookislands@bsp.com.pg.