Private credit card and banking details have been leaked as a result of a security breach at a company which processes online transactions, the Payments Association of SA (Pasa) said on Friday.
Pasa‘s chief executive officer Walter Volke said that there was no need for “undue concern” by anyone including card holders. He explained: “There are indications at this stage that only a limited number of card details have been accessed by outside organisations, and as a result limited fraud has been perpetrated.”
Volke also notified cardholders that they must report any suspicious account transactions to their banks as soon as they are aware of them, to prevent any further fraudulent transactions.
Although only releasing a statement on Friday, Pasa say they discovered the card security breach earlier last week, which was apparently at a company that processed the online transactions and “serves a number of large online merchants”.
“The card data emanating from these online transactions seems to have been stored in a manner which does not meet the stringent security standards expected by Pasa, the international card schemes and the banks,” Volker said.
He added that Pasa has been working with the banks and the card schemes to implement immediate measures to block the potential exposure of the card data.
“Should fraudulent transactions be perpetrated on any of these cards as a result of the data compromise, cardholders would not be exposed to any losses — as is the case under normal circumstances,” he said.
