PayAsUGym, the online gym pass provider, has been the victim of an IT hacking incident.

In the early hours of Thursday morning (15 December), one the company’s IT servers was targeted by an unauthorised person.

PayAsUGym said it does not hold any financial or credit card information of its users on its servers but the company confirmed that 300,000 email addresses and encrypted passwords of its members could have been accessed.

Customers were notified on Friday about the security breach and were advised to change their passwords. The company told Health Club Management that everything is back to normal and trade has not been impacted.

PayAsUGym said: “Once alerted, we immediately closed down the breach and informed the Police and the Action Fraud Police, who are investigating the incident further. In addition we have migrated all servers to new servers in consultation with cyber security professionals.

“We take the security of customer information very seriously. Unfortunately cyber attacks are becoming more frequent which is why, as a policy, we do not (and will never) hold financial or credit card details and we insist that all passwords are encrypted when stored.”

PayAsUGym, which launched in 2011, is the brainchild of entrepreneurs Neil Harmsworth and Jamie Ward. The online gym network uses smartphone technology for customers to locate a gym, book a session and pay per each visit without membership fees. It has 2,500 sites across the UK in its network.