Some 16,000 Taiwanese credit cardholders who made transactions in the US in the last few months could be exposed to fraud risk after a massive security breach at a US card proces-sing company, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday.
"We currently can only get an estimate of the possible number of leaks and have not obtained accurate information of the affected Taiwanese credit card issuers so far," the commission's vice chairman Lu Daung-yen (
The 16,000 people include 7,000 Visa holders, with the rest being MasterCard holders, according to Nancy Yang, chief secretary the commission's Bureau of Monetary Affairs.
The Singaporean branch of CardSystems Solutions Inc, whose computer system was cracked by hackers who stole information on up to 40 million accounts, has notified the nation's issuers about the transaction information and credit card numbers suspected of being stolen, according to the commission.
The credit card issuers will actively help affected cardholders to obtain new cards, Lu said.
If the data breach leads to any fraudulent use of credit cards, the cardholders will not bear any financial losses, he stressed.
The financial watchdog said it will closely monitor the issue, and urged card issuers to provide necessary assistance and protection to any cardholders affected by the security breach.
Local branches of Visa International and MasterCard International said yesterday that no Taiwanese credit cards have been used fraudulently so far.
Julie Yang (楊雅婷), sales and business senior director at MasterCard International, said the company on Monday told all its member banks to review and check the compromised credit card numbers. If questionable accounts are found, card issuers will follow standard procedures to assign new card numbers for victimized consumers, she said.
Visa International said it has obtained the numbers of all 7,000 accounts affected by the data theft and has informed card issuers.
"Visa is cooperating with the credit card processing company [Arizona-based CardSystems Solutions Inc], legal authorities and affected member institutions to monitor and prevent Visa credit card frauds," the company said in a Chinese-language statement issued yesterday.
Visa suggested that cardholders carefully examine their Web-based accounts and credit card bills. If any abnormal transactions are found, card users should immediately inform their financial institutions to protect their rights, Visa said.
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