Chinese smartphone brand OnePlus bans website credit card payments after fraud reports

OnePlus, a Chinese smartphone brand whose sales doubled last year on the back of strong overseas sales, is pulling credit card payment processing from its international online store after dozens of customers claimed to have suffered credit card fraud after making a purchase.

“As a precaution, we are temporarily disabling credit card payments at oneplus.net. PayPal is still available, and we are exploring alternative secure payment options with our service providers,” OnePlus said in a statement posted on its official online forum on Tuesday.

“This is a serious issue and we are investigating around the clock,” it added.

OnePlus is one of the few Chinese brands whose overseas smartphone sales outstrip those in the domestic market, though the company does not release specific sales data. Its official international website processes shipments to almost 40 global destinations, including the US where the leading Chinese smartphone brand Huawei Technologies recently suffered a setback after US carrier AT&T walked away from a deal due to US government pressure over security concerns.

Over the weekend a customer wrote in a post on the OnePlus forum that both of his credit cards were subject to fraudulent charges after making two separate transactions on the OnePlus online store in November 2017. The buyer claimed that the only place both credit cards had been used in the last six months was on the OnePlus website.

After the post, dozens of other customers flooded the OnePlus forum claiming they had encountered similar credit card fraud after purchasing mobile phones from the website.