Visa confirmed today that the credit card details of a
number of customers in the US and Europe have been stolen from a
US-based merchant.The company, which is liaising with US
authorities on the breach, said it issued a fraud alert to its
member banks as soon as it was informed about an internal security
breach at the merchant, which it refused to identify.
A Visa spokesman said the number of cards
affected was not as large as initial reports had suggested. The
decision to reissue compromised cards would be up to member issuing
banks, he added.
This is the second time this year Visa has fallen victim to an
attempt to obtain credit card numbers illegally.
In February, the company and rival credit card firm MasterCard
admitted that a computer hacker had gained access to more than 5.4
million credit card accounts, although they said none of the
information had been used in a fraudulent way.
The hacker had breached the security system of a third-party
payment card processor to gain access to credit card numbers, Visa
and MasterCard said.
The latest breach will be particularly embarrassing for Visa,
emerging on the same day that it was trumpeting the success of its
Verified by Visa secure payment service.
The online authentication scheme, which launched in Europe in April
2002, has signed up 4,000 retailers, 30 acquiring banks and 35
issuing banks, Visa said yesterday (11 June).