Tesco Bank says normal service resumes after cyber theft

Nov 8 (Reuters) - Tesco Bank, a unit of supermarket chain Tesco Plc (Frankfurt: 852647 - news) , said late on Tuesday it had resumed full service after a cyber theft over the weekend that targeted thousands of customers forced it to halt online transactions from all current accounts.

Tesco added it had confirmed around 9,000 customers had been affected by fraudulent transactions and that the total cost of refunding all customers was estimated to be 2.5 million pounds.

"We've now refunded all customer accounts affected by fraud and lifted the suspension of online debit transactions so that customers can use their accounts as normal", Tesco Bank's chief executive Benny Higgins said in a statement. ($1 = 0.8076 pounds) (Reporting by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru and James Davey in London; Editing by Gareth Jones)