Canadians Reporting Unauthorized Visa Debit Withdrawals from Spotify: CBC

Spotify is making unauthorized withdrawals from Canadians’ Visa debit accounts.

According to a new report from CBC News, multiple Canadians–without Spotify accounts–have reported weird and unusual charges from the popular music streaming app. Torontonian Danielle Parent, for example, noticed four unusual withdrawals of $119.88 from the Swedish music streaming platform.

Parent says that the money was withdrawn directly from her checking account for a grand total of $479.52, leaving her account overdrawn and without money to pay for groceries.

“I kind of expect fraudulent charges to maybe happen on a credit card, but to have a direct charge on a chequing account was very shocking,” she said.

She immediately reported the withdrawals to her bank, TD, which flagged the transactions as fraudulent and sent her a new debit card. The bank told Parent that it was investigating the withdrawals, and noted that there have been similar issues involving other clients.

Another Canadian TD customer’s debit card was denied while trying to purchase items at a convenience store due to the fact that Spotify made three unauthorized withdrawals of $119.88; she had never signed up for the service. In both cases, the unauthorized withdrawals were made on Visa Debit cards.



In a statement to CBC, a TD spokesperson said that the company is currently investigating the issue with Spotify and Visa debit cards and is working to reverse any unauthorized charges made by the streaming service. The bank would not, however, disclose how many customers are affected.

The charges “stemmed from an attack targeting debit cards in Canada,” a Spotify spokesperson said in an email to CBC, and were not associated with Spotify itself.

The company said it is providing refunds and investigating. “Spotify takes fraudulent activity on our service extremely seriously,” the statement said.

So if you’re a Spotify user with a Visa debit card, it may be worth checking your bank account for any fishy charges.

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