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Apple Mistakenly Refunds User HUF 254 million

Hungary Today 2024.07.03.

Apple refunded HUF 254 million (EUR 643,014) to a Hungarian user’s Apple Pay mobile payment and mobile wallet service-registered card, reports hvg.hu, based on a screenshot sent to the portal. The wrong compensation occurred after the company started to refund the amounts wrongly deducted from users last week.

Like the others, the reader of hvg.hu had thousands of forints wrongly deducted by Apple Pay, a total of HUF 7,169 (EUR 18). According to the screenshots, the money was returned to his account shortly afterwards, but this was not the amount deducted. The reader received HUF 84,623,371 (EUR 214,101), followed by two more transfers of the same amount, resulting in a total of HUF 253,870,113 (EUR 642,303) from Apple.

After an hour, the amount mistakenly sent was blocked and then deducted from the account, and the HUF 7,169 was also refunded.

“In the end, it was like before the whole thing, only I got my rightful refund,” wrote the reader.

As the newsportal reported last week, Apple Pay wrongly deducted money from a number of Hungarian users. Some people had only HUF 899 (EUR 2.27) deducted, but others had their balance reduced by HUF 550,000 (EUR 1,391) in dozens of transactions in five minutes. As the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) stressed,

a total of 780,000 unauthorized debits worth more than HUF 2 billion (EUR 5 million) were made.

On Saturday, the MNB called on domestic banks to start compensating the affected people immediately. On the same day, OTP Bank informed its customers that Apple would start repaying the amounts withdrawn within days, and on Sunday, Gránit Bank reimbursed its customers, while Apple also started repaying the money wrongly withdrawn to CIB and MHB customers.

On Tuesday morning, the Hungarian National Bank announced that most of the victims had received their money back. For those who are still waiting for a refund, the central bank advised them to contact their account holding bank immediately.

Fact

In connection with these events, Index contacted Péter Gergely, a financial expert at BiztosDöntés.hu, who listed the ways to protect against such events. According to him, customers cannot actually avoid the current mistake. The expert suggested, among other things, that it might be worthwhile to set up a separate bank card for online payments, with only enough money to cover the cost of auto-renewable subscriptions. He also pointed out that users can set an online payment limit for your online card, preventing the provider from making payments above the limit.

Hungary's Largest Commercial Bank OTP among the Top 30 in Europe
Hungary's Largest Commercial Bank OTP among the Top 30 in Europe

The financial institution is on par with competitors such as Dutch ABN AMRO or Polish Santander Bank Polska.Continue reading

Via hvg.hu; Featured image via Pexels


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