SEOUL, July 31 (Yonhap) -- Lotte Card Co. has been slapped with 5 billion won (US$3.38 million) in financial penalties and a business suspension of 1.5 months over its massive data leak, the financial regulator said Friday.

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said the card company is banned from issuing cards to new customers from Aug. 1 to Sept. 15.

Lotte Card's online payment system was hacked last year, resulting in the leak of personal information of about 2.97 million customers.

It was also found that the company did not take sufficient encryption measures for the log files.

Earlier this year, the state data protection watchdog separately decided to impose a penalty of 9.62 billion won on Lotte Card.

sam@yna.co.kr

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