South African Visa and MasterCard cardholders will have to wait until tomorrow to find out if they were among the 40 million accounts that were compromised in the US, the credit card companies say.
The local offices of both companies say they are still waiting for the breakdown by world region and country following news that a US third-party processor had its security systems breached in May.
Visa SA spokesman Zubeir Shah says about 30 000 accounts located in the Central Europe, Middle East and Africa region, which includes this country, have been compromised.
"Unfortunately, we will only be receiving a more detailed country by country breakdown tomorrow," he says.
A MasterCard SA spokesperson would say only that MasterCard was also waiting until tomorrow.
Of the compromised accounts, 22 million were Visa cards and 13.9 million were MasterCard branded. This includes Maestro and Cirrus.
The hack, reportedly by an Iranian, took place at CardSystems, a company that processes transactions on behalf of banks and merchants. This company says it identified the breach on 22 May and alerted the US`s Federal Bureau of Investigation. It also says it has upgraded its security systems.
Both Visa and MasterCard International have said in their international statements that the processing company was not in compliance with their security standards and that they had given it a "limited amount of time" to put its house in order.
According to some international press reports, the hacker gained access to CardSystems` database and installed a script that acts like a virus, searching out types of transaction data.
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