Apparent Cardholder Data Breach at MasterCard, Visa

Various news organizations are reporting today that MasterCard is looking into a possible breach of cardholder information  related to a US payment processor.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The breach was reported early Friday by the Krebs On Security blog, which also said that Visa was also notifying banks about a breach involving a third-party payment processor.” MasterCard has engaged an independent entity to explore the alleged data breach and the company has notified law enforcement organizations. Both MasterCard and Visa are said to be alerting officials at card issuing banks that process transactions through the two companies.

At the time of this writing, few in the financial services sector are saying much. MasterCard, through a spokesperson, said that “MasterCard’s own systems have not been compromised in any manner.” The company did not indicate how many cardholder accounts may be at risk. MasterCard also declined to comment on the the number of credit grantors it had alerted.

Representatives from several major US banks declined to comment or could not be reached for comment about whether or not they had been contacted by MasterCard or Visa, according to the Journal.

Michael Klozotsky is the Chief Content Officer at insideARM.com. He’ll be calling his bank this afternoon.