Payday loan provider Wonga has revealed that hundreds of thousands of its customers may have had personal information stolen in a data breach which occurred last week.

It is believed that the breach affected in excess of 250,000 customers – a large proportion of are based in the UK, with the rest coming from Poland. Information including name, email address, home address, phone number, the last four digits of card numbers, bank account numbers, and sort codes may have all stolen in the data theft.

“We are urgently working to establish further details and contacting those who we know have been impacted,” said Wonga in a statement. “We take issues of customer data and security very seriously.

“Cyber attacks are, unfortunately, on the rise. While Wonga operates to the highest security standards, these illegal attacks are unfortunately increasingly sophisticated.”

The British money lender, where annual interest rate charges can be as high as 1509 per cent, has also warned its customers to look out for ‘unusual activity’ in their bank accounts – as well as letting banks know of the situation and being vigilant regarding potential scams.