Informed by a message on his cell phone Fraudsters drain bank account - CS customer has to watch live

A client receives push messages from his bank every minute about "provisional" debits from his account that he has not made. He has his debit card blocked. But that doesn't help.

A Credit Suisse customer had to watch live how fraudsters drained his bank account. The bank sent him several push notifications about provisional debits to Apple. A total of CHF 300 was provisionally debited from his debit card account. But the customer hadn't bought anything from Apple.

The man reacted immediately: he had his debit card blocked by telephone and asked the bank to stop the payments to Apple. That was the end of the matter, the customer thought, after all, the push notifications say "Payment reserved". But the 300 francs are debited from his account two days later.

"Earmarked" and "provisional" payments cannot be stopped

Credit Suisse confirms that "provisional" debits and "earmarked" payments cannot be stopped and that he should reclaim the money from Apple, the customer tells the SRF consumer magazine "Espresso".

In response to requests from Apple, the bank only checks whether the card is active and whether sufficient funds are available. "If these two conditions are met, the bank authorizes the debit to the account," it says in a statement.

This also applies in cases where fraud is behind the payment, as the merchant is not usually involved in this, Swiss Banking Ombudsman Andreas Barfuss told SRF.

In the end, Apple repaid the injured party 250 francs of the money that had been wrongly debited. The customer is not told why not the full 300 francs.