How Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's fintech startup Navi lost Rs 14 crore to payment gateway fraud

Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's fintech startup Navi Technologies has fallen victim to a payment gateway fraud, resulting in losses of ₹14.26 crore over a two-week period in December 2024.

The Whitefield Cyber Crime Police in Bengaluru have launched an investigation after registering a case against unidentified fraudsters.

According to a report in The Hindu, scammers exploited a critical vulnerability in the company's third-party payment gateway system, allowing them to manipulate transaction amounts after payment initiation. The fraud was discovered when the company's vigilance team detected unusual patterns in transaction records.

The scam took advantage of a technical loophole that permitted users to modify payment amounts through the third-party application provider (TPAP) gateway after initiating transactions on the Navi app.

Fraudsters would initially enter larger amounts for services like mobile recharges and EMI payments, then edit the payable amount to just ₹1 after the payment was processed. While the system recorded these transactions as successful for the minimal amount, Navi Technologies was charged the original full payment.

Srinivas Gowda, a vigilance officer at Navi Technologies, revealed that the fraudulent activities occurred between December 10 and 24, 2024. The company's complaint states that multiple perpetrators, posing as legitimate customers, repeatedly exploited this vulnerability to defraud the Bengaluru-based fintech firm.
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