CYBERSPACE – Saturday, Visa USA acknowledged that a merchant in the U.S. “may have experienced a data breach” which compromised cardholder account information. No details have been made available at this time, including the name or location of the merchant, the number of accounts possibly affected, or the precise time when the breach took place.Visa’s statement on Saturday came as a response to an inquiry from News.com inquiry, which stemmed from customers whose cards had recently been put on a fraud watch list, or deactivated due to a security breach, including a San Francisco Bay Area man whose Wells Fargo account had been deactivated. Wells Fargo referred the issue to Visa.
In its statement on Saturday, Visa said that after it learned of the possible breach, “Visa quickly alerted the affected financial institutions to protect consumers through independent fraud monitoring and, if needed, reissuing cards.”
The news comes with Visa still reeling a bit from the breach at CardSystems Solutions earlier this year, which led to as many as 40 million credit card accounts being exposed to potential fraud, most of that total being Visa and MasterCard accounts.
“As Visa has said before, it’s important that every entity that handles payment card information adhere to the highest data protection standards, such as the Payment Card Industry…standard, to protect the security and privacy of their customers,” the company said in its statement Saturday. “Visa is aggressively partnering with entities across the nation to broaden adherence to these standards.”
