14 DAY TRIAL // There is a highly active market for illegal trading of banking information in China, where the buyer can receive the information in a very short time after placing an order.
With more than 400 million credit cards and a volume of transactions estimated at an average of $161 / €136.7 billion every year, China is the country with the largest number of credit cards issued.
Given these figures, it’s no wonder that the country records a worrying number of leaks involving payment cards.
More than 400 buyers ask daily for credit card info
According to Want China Times, anyone who wants to purchase this sort of information can place an order on a social network and is contacted with the products only a few minutes later.
It is said that at least 400 buyers ask about this type of data on a daily basis. As it happens on any cybercrime website in the world, cards have different prices, as some are more valuable than others.
Card information moved on the Chinese markets is still sellable even if it has already been used, but the price is much lower (about $0.06 / €0.05 per item) than in the case of first-hand stuff, which is transacted even for $0.80 / €0.68.
The sellers are generally bank employees who have direct access to personal information of the customers. It is worth noting that the financial institutions in China cannot disclose this type of data without the consent of the client.
Little security imposed for some transactions
However, the contract for issuing a credit card is not sufficiently clear and it does not stipulate in what ways banks are allowed to use the information obtained from the customer. This contributes to perpetuating the data leak state and the increasing number of banking details that fall in the hands of third parties.
Some online financial transactions in China do not require too much info. According to the newspaper, some platforms ask only for the name of the cardholder, their ID number and the card number to approve large transactions.
“Millions of dollars have been misappropriated through these platforms in 2013,” said Xiao Kai, director of financial supervision of the Shanghai People's Procurator, and the situation does not seem to have improved in 2014.