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As voice phishing schemes tricking victims into making direct card payments become rampant, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is stepping up its Fraud Detection System (FDS) monitoring, strengthening investigations into illegal merchant businesses, and providing in-depth counseling to protect vulnerable elderly citizens.
Today (September 15), the FSS announced consumer alerts and institutional improvement measures aimed at enhancing card user protection.
The FSS plans to reinforce credit card companies' fraud detection rules.
While past fraud detection rules primarily focused on preventing unauthorized payments by fraudsters, the new measures aim to catch cases where victims are deceived into making direct payments themselves.
Protective measures will also be strengthened for adults aged 70 and older, who often have lower digital financial accessibility and are more vulnerable to scams impersonating public authorities.
According to the FSS, voice phishing damage cases among older adults reached 1,493 last year, a 42.6% increase compared to the previous year.
In one actual case, a woman in her 70s suffered financial losses after being threatened by a scammer impersonating a financial company employee who claimed, "If you do not cancel past illegal card sales, you will be classified as a credit delinquent," prompting her to directly enter her credit card information into an illegal merchant's platform.
Consequently, when consumers aged 70 or older attempt to purchase highly liquid items such as gift certificates and the transaction is flagged as abnormal, the FSS is pursuing a measure to withhold immediate approval and instead provide in-depth counseling to allow a cooling-off period.
The FSS plans to evaluate the effectiveness of this system moving forward and consider expanding the target age groups and range of products.
Furthermore, for damage cases involving illegal merchants engaged in practices such as illegal cash-outs (cardkkang), the FSS will intensify investigations into civil complaints related to card companies' payment processing procedures to prevent illicit businesses from exploiting the payment structure.
The FSS also emphasized that consumers must remain vigilant against other scams, such as high-yield side jobs or part-time work luring victims into proxy-paying for goods, requests for payment under the guise of low-interest loan brokerage fees, and romance scams cashing out gift certificates.
"Because victims directly authorize card payments and loans, credit card compensation may be denied, requiring extreme caution," the FSS warned. "Methods that process payments using only card information without separate authentication are highly vulnerable to financial fraud and accidents, making it essential to verify the identity of the counterpart."
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