The nation's credit-card holders do not have to worry about their account information have been leaked in the latest security breach in the US, as the US card processing company responsible for this extensive data theft does not deal with card transactions in Taiwan, international card giants said yesterday.
"The data bank invaded [by computer hackers] does not belong to MasterCard International, but to the Tucson, Arizona-based company CardSystems Solutions Inc, which is contracted by US banks, member institutions and merchants to deal with card transactions," said a Chinese-language statement issued by MasterCard's local branch yesterday.
CardSystems' customers include 105,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises in the US, the statement said.
"We've notified our member banks around the world to detect suspicious card transactions. As long as questionable account information is found, card issuers will follow standard procedures to block the card numbers and give new numbers to affected card users," Julie Yang (楊雅婷), MasterCard's sales and business senior director, said by telephone.
She said that the data leaked this time only involves information offered on traditional magnetic-strip cards, including names, account numbers and expiry dates. Personal confidential data, such as birthdays, social-security numbers and addresses remain intact.
If any card fraud occurs, banks will take full responsibility as stated in the contracts with consumers, the organization said.
CardSystems acknowledged Sunday that the company should not have retained those records, the New York Times reported, citing John Perry, chief executive of CardSystems.
Under rules established by Visa and MasterCard, processors are not allowed to retain cardholder information including names, account numbers, expiration dates and security codes after a transaction is handled, the paper said.
This financial data breach affects about 20 million Visa holders, 14 million MasterCard holders, and 6 million holders of American Express and other card brands.
Among the 40 million compromised accounts, "the Visa-branded cards issued in Taiwan are not many, and so far no Taiwanese Visa cards have been fraudulently used," said Christopher Clark, Visa International's country manager in Taiwan.
"Taiwanese consumers can be relieved," Clark said.
But to protect cardholders' rights and interests, he said member banks will take the initiative to contact the affected card users and re-issue credit cards with new account numbers.
"This incident once again proves the importance of using the more secure integrated-circuit [IC] cards," he said, which both Visa and MasterCard are striving to introduce to reduce card frauds.
This large-scale data theft also caught the attention of the authorities. The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has asked the local branches of the international credit-card companies to report on the possible impact on the nation's credit-card users.
Yang said MasterCard has made clarifications with officials on the phone yesterday, and will deliver written reports giving details.
Clark said Visa had updated its information with the commission yesterday and will keep close contacts with the company's Singapore-based Asia Pacific regional office to obtain the latest details.
American Express Bank Ltd said it has not received any notification from the FSC, but said that the breach has had no impact on the Taiwanese market, according to the bank's public affairs manager, Tiffany Chen (
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li