Confirmed: Concerns Over Scams, Fraud Preventing Some fuboTV Customers from Paying with Mastercard
Sometimes, even when you want to pay for a streaming service, there’s just no way to do it. Over the past day, reports began to surface online indicating that some subscribers were unable to pay their monthly bill to sports-focused live TV streaming service fuboTV because they were Mastercard users.
First pointed out by a Reddit user, some fuboTV subscribers are having issues paying for their subscriptions using the Mastercards they have on file. The social media post indicates that the user’s recent automatic payment was rejected by their bank “due to too many hacked accounts and payment scams” at Fubo. After their initial form of payment was declined, the poster indicated that despite contacting the streamer, they had been unable to set up payment through their bank’s bill pay app.
Another Redditor indicated that they had run into a similar issue attempting to pay their bill and were considering canceling the service because they were unable to come up with a solution.
A Fubo spokesperson told The Streamable, “We are aware of an isolated issue with one credit union and Mastercard, which Mastercard is investigating.”
While there were no details provided about which credit union is behind the issue, one of the Reddit posters does appear to reside in the Seattle area. The problem is not currently impacting all Fubo customers who pay with a Mastercard, so it is possible that the situation is limited to consumers in the Pacific Northwest.
As indicated by Fubo’s response, the streamer does not appear to be directly responsible for the issue, though some users have been frustrated by the response that they have received from the company’s customer service department. However, the service was the victim of a well-publicized cyber attack during the World Cup late last year, which could be part of the problem for the credit union. On Dec. 14, many Fubo customers were unable to log into their accounts to watch the France and Morocco semifinal match. Shortly thereafter, the streamer informed customers that unlike other service interruptions involving streaming platforms and high-profile events, the issue was because of an online attack.
“The incident was not related to any bandwidth constraints on Fubo’s part,” the service said in a statement. “We were instead the target of a criminal cyber attack.”
While the company had no reason to believe that customers’ financial information was exposed to the hackers, it was understandably a concern for subscribers, and now potentially, it might be a concern to one credit union as well.
Of course, the easiest fix to the Mastercard problem would be for customers to use a different, non-Mastercard form of payment to take care of their monthly bills. However, that is obviously not an option for all people. Banks have relationships with certain card providers, so many customers are not able to use a Visa card if they want to tie the subscription to their bank account. Currently, Fubo does not offer a way to link a bank account to a subscription other than through a debit card; in fact, a card is the only accepted method of payment for the streamer.
Further, many people might do not have access to a credit card, either for age, financial, or personal reasons. At this point, it is unclear if a pre-paid Visa card would satisfy Fubo’s payment criteria, but short of a more official solution from the streamer, Mastercard, or the unnamed credit union, that might be the only option that certain customers have short of canceling their service.
Fubo
Fubo is a live TV streaming service with about 90 top channels that start at $79.99 per month. This plan includes local channels, 25 of the top 35 cable channels, and regional sports networks (RSNs). In total, you should expect to pay about $91.99 per month, after adding in their RSN Fee. Fubo was previously known as “fuboTV.”