We’ve received an updated statement from Mobikwik:

“We detected a financial discrepancy on the company by some unidentified persons. We reassure that our users data and money is safe and secure and is not compromised and also payment gateway transactions is safe and secure with strong firewalls. We have taken immediate action by lodging FIR with gurgaon police cyber cell for criminal investigation and to punish the culprits.”

Earlier: Wallet company MobiKwik reported Rs 19 crore missing from its accounts and has filed a FIR on Tuesday, reports the Hindustan Times. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the development to MediaNama.

The report added that MobiKwik was unable to find where the money had gone from and hinted at a fraud in the company. It added, that in its complaint, MobiKwik said that the money was supposed to be deducted from customer’s wallets but was deducted instead from the company’s accounts. A case was registered under Section 420 (fraud) and Section 406 (criminal breach of trust) of the IPC and was referred to the Gurgaon’s cyber crime wing.

Rise in financial crime

Meanwhile, earlier this year, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) issued a consultation paper which calls for developing a framework for security of digital wallets operating in the country. As part of the guidelines recommended, the government said CERT-In shall notify the categories of incidents and breaches that are required to be reported to it mandatorily.

Financial cybercrime in India has been steadily increasing over the years. For the year 2015-16, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reported 16,468 cyber crimes related to ATM, debit card, credit card and net banking frauds. The number of frauds reported by the RBI were 13,083 in the year 2014-15 and 9,500 in the year 2013-14.

With digital payments on the rise, and digital heists and frauds becoming common. In India, most notably, over 3.2 million debit card details were likely stolen by hackers hackers from ATMs and POS machines in October 2016. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said that the complaints of fraudulent withdrawal are limited to cards of 19 banks and 641 customers. The total amount involved is Rs. 1.3 crore. More recently, Bank of Maharashtra reported a loss of Rs 25 crore in March as frauds exploited a bug in their UPI application and core banking software.

Updates: We added a statement from Mobikwik, which they later sent an updated version of