Credit Card Companies Report 144 System Failures and 4 Security Breaches in the Past Five Years

Woori Card and Hana Card Report the Most Incidents

In the past five years, Woori Card reported the highest number of system failure incidents among domestic credit card companies, while Hana Card experienced the most security breaches.

Jo Jwa-jin, CEO of Lotte Card (center), Kim Young-seop, CEO of KT (right), and Yoon Jong-ha, Vice Chairman of MBK Partners (left), are responding to lawmakers' questions at a hearing on a large-scale hacking incident in telecommunications and finance held by the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting and Communications Committee on September 24, 2025. Photo by Kim Hyunmin

According to data submitted by the Financial Supervisory Service to the office of Assemblyman Lee Heonseung of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, on September 24, a total of 144 system failure incidents were reported by eight major credit card companies (Samsung, Shinhan, KB Kookmin, Hyundai, Lotte, Hana, Woori, and BC) over the past five years.

From 2021 through last month, Woori Card reported 39 incidents, followed by Hana Card with 34, KB Kookmin Card and Samsung Card with 16 each, Shinhan Card with 14, Lotte Card with 13, and Hyundai Card with 12.

During the same period, there were a total of four security breach incidents: Hana Card reported two, while Shinhan Card and Lotte Card each reported one.

Hana Card suffered a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on July 12, 2023, and experienced another denial-of-service attack on June 17 of this year.

In November 2021, Shinhan Card experienced a system tampering incident that resulted in financial losses totaling 177.39 million won for 73 members.

Lotte Card has been dealing with the aftermath of a malware infection caused by an external hacking incident last month.

Meanwhile, as of last year, the total number of members across the eight major credit card companies increased by 1.9% compared to 2023, but their information technology budgets grew by only 0.6%.

Last year, the total information technology budget was 1.0219 trillion won. Hana Card (84.1 billion won) and Woori Card (96 billion won) saw decreases of 10.8% and 9.1%, respectively, compared to 2023. Samsung Card’s budget (168.5 billion won) also dropped by 6.5%.

BC Card had the smallest information technology budget among the eight companies, at 77.5 billion won.

Assemblyman Lee stated, "Frequent incidents at credit card companies are raising concerns about the stability of electronic financial services. Rather than focusing solely on short-term performance, credit card companies should prioritize strengthening consumer protection and service stability by increasing their investments in information technology."