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Swiss woman loses more than 1000 francs due to a vulnerability in Twint

The next time Livia Maag will want to use Twint to make a transfer, she'll probably think twice before doing so. The young woman wanted to use the Swiss mobile payment application to pay 1129 francs to a business partner. Bad idea, because the money never arrived.

In a story broadcast on the SRF television channel, Livia Maag explained that her associate had recently changed her phone number. A number that was used by someone in the past and that was already linked to a bank account. The young woman quickly realized that the money had never arrived at its destination, but to a stranger's account. Unfortunately, the latter refused to return the money.

How could such a huge rift happen? Asked by RTS, Twint explains that this is a "very unusual" case and that it had never happened before. Nevertheless, the mobile payment company promises to take steps to prevent such an incident from happening again. However, this is not the first time that Twint has had problems. Journalist Xavier Studer explained in December 2019 that his bank account had been debited with an amount that was not due. At the time, Twint denied any responsibility, which led Studer to say that the Bluetooth technology used by the mobile payment system was dangerous.

To make matters worse, it is impossible to configure Twint independently from your phone number. If your smartphone is lost or stolen, it is not possible to block transactions or deactivate your account. Today, around 2.5 million people use Twint to make their payments. That's a third of the Swiss population, a much higher proportion than for Apple Pay and Samsung Pay users.

Based on: srf.ch (de), twint.ch, xavierstuder.com (fr)