SINGAPORE: Koufu, one of Singapore’s largest food court operators, has notified the police after receiving reports of "unauthorised transactions" linked to its app.

“We received a few reports with regards to unauthorised transactions on payments in our Koufu Eat app,” the company said on Tuesday (Dec 31) in response to CNA’s queries. 

It added that it has reported the cases to the police and an investigation is underway. 

Since late October, a few reviews on Google Play Store alleged that fraudulent transactions were made on the reviewers’ credit or debit cards after they used the Koufu Eat app. 

A reviewer posted on Oct 26 that they had tried to add their card details on the app but none showed up. They then received an alert that the card was being added to Google Pay.

Another review on Dec 3 read: "Getting fraudulent transactions after adding my DBS credit card to the app." 

One reviewer who posted on Dec 21 described having issues adding their card or linking their PayLah account to the app. A few weeks later they said their card was used for unauthorised transactions. 

As of Dec 31, at least six reviews about the issue had been made. 

Celine, who wanted to be known only by her first name, told CNA about a similar situation when she tried to use the app to buy dinner. 

She downloaded the app for the first time when she visited a Koufu food court in Tengah with her husband on Dec 11.

They ran into issues after she tried to use her husband's card to make a payment on the app. They were asked repeatedly to key in a One-Time Password (OTP) despite doing so.

“For some reason or another … the transaction, the order, didn’t go through,” she said. 

“We tried a few times and we kept encountering the same error.” 

On Dec 21, her husband was notified that €500 (S$709) had been charged to his card by someone with a "weird" name, she said.

According to Koufu, the app does not store customers' credit card details as its payment gateway is via eNETS. 

“Upon checking out on (the) Koufu Eat app, customers will be redirected to eNETS payment gateway to process the payment,” it said. 

CNA has contacted the Personal Data Protection Commission and the police for more information.