Personal data of nearly 3 million customers of this credit card company leaked

Credit Cards: South Korean credit card company Lotte Card, controlled by private equity fund MBK, said that the personal data of 2.97 million customers has been leaked as a result of a hacking attack, reported Reuters. Lotte Card was set up in Dec 2002 as a technical and business company licensed by American Express and Lotte Department Store, its Wikipedia page shows.

Among the credit card customers who had been affected, some 280,000 had sensitive data leaked that could be abused for card fraud, Lotte Card's CEO Cho Jwa-jin told a press conference.

What does the company plan to do?

The company's CEO Cho said that the organisation will prioritise issuing new credit cards for the affected group. Besides, the company will also pay any damages, provide interest-free instalment services apart from keeping aside a data security budget of 110 billion won (equivalent to $79.30 million) over the next five years, Cho said.

Seoul-based private equity fund MBK Partners' investment vehicle owns a 59.8% stake in Lotte Card, according to a company filing.

The data breach has evoked strong reactions from the highest office of South Korea as President Lee Jae Myung ordered the government to come up with “fundamental comprehensive measures to minimise hacking damage,” according to his office, Reuters reported.

The menace of data breach is obviously not only confined to South Korea. It is a global phenomenon. Back home in India, organisations have been battling with this for too long – like everywhere else – and investing money to keep themselves safe and protected.

The average cost of an organisation for a data breach has risen 13 per cent to ₹22 crore in 2025 from ₹19.5 crore in the year-ago period, a report by IBM had indicated.

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