Hackers hit Global Payments

Wall Street Journal Online reports.

It was the first time that Global Payments disclosed details of the breach. However, the company did not say how the intruders got access to the information.

Visa consequently removed Global Payments from its list of compliant service providers, New York Times states.

Amy Corn, a spokeswoman for Global Payments, says the company expects to be reinstated, but did not indicate how long that would take.

MasterCard and Visa alerted the nation's banks, and claim their own systems were not compromised, CSPnet.com says.

MasterCard says it is concerned whenever there is any possibility that cardholders could be inconvenienced and commits to monitoring the incident and to taking steps to safeguard account information.