The VTB financial group reported that when dealing with cards of VTB and VTB-24 banks, problems are possible if used in the terminals of other banks. This was recently reported by the well-known information portal "Rain".
Although the VTB financial group did not advertise its problems, any client of the bank, or a stranger who tried to call the bank’s telephone line, could listen to the voice mail recording, which reported in an impartial voice that when using VTB and VTB-24 bank cards in other banks possible problems.
Here is the record:
"Dear customers, due to reasons beyond the control of banks, when conducting a card transaction at a third-party bank terminal, errors may occur. We apologize for any inconvenience." From the message of the bank VTB-24
The answering machine does not give an answer to the question of what exactly awaits bank customers when trying to use cards in the terminals of other banks, but transparently hints that the nature of the problem can be absolutely anyone. Alarmed customers began to try to figure out the reason for the appearance of this ominous record, but it was impossible to reach the telephone line of VTB banks and VTB-24.
When the reporters managed to reach the official representatives of the VTB financial group, they were told that their bank systems were working without any failures, and problems were possible only if they used terminals from other banks.
Most likely, this problem is associated with problems that occurred on December 4 at Sberbank. Throughout the day, Sberbank card holders complained that during operations in retail outlets and terminals of the bank, there were failures in the form of repeated debiting of funds from the customer’s account.
This problem could be taken as an ordinary coincidence (even if we take into account the fact that money was withdrawn from the customer’s account, which is already suspicious), if it were not for one nuance. On November 30, Sberbank recorded numerous cases of refusal when paying with bank cards, both in various retail chains and on the Internet. It is alarming that the first alarming “bells” appeared in April, when Visa Sberbank cards were temporarily not functioning.
November 4, 2018, at 20-16 pm, Sberbank reported that the problem was successfully eliminated, and the money would be returned to the cardholders of the bank within 5 days.
Recent events related to the warnings of banks of the VTB Group make you think that it is possible that these events were not accidental. All this looks like a group of hackers was able to hack into the Sberbank security networks and is now withdrawing money from the accounts. The fact that it is the banks of the VTB financial group that warn their customers about possible problems with the cards, says a lot.
Since the main owners of the banks of the VTB financial group and Sberbank are the state, there is no doubt that the banks of the VTB Group were warned in advance about possible problems. Since it is possible that this is a large-scale hacker attack on the largest Russian state bank, there is a possibility that the next ones for the hackers will hit the banks of the VTB financial group.
In this regard, it is possible to recommend the owners of plastic cards of the VTB Financial Group and Sberbank at least for a few days to limit transactions with plastic cards as much as possible. As a last resort, withdraw money only at the banks' cash desks.
