MasterCard leak impacts on Hong Kong
By Vincent Lam (China Daily/HK Edition)
Updated: 2005-06-21 10:18

The leak of MasterCard data has triggered alarm among Hong Kong banks, forcing them to notify their affected customers to change their credit card numbers in a bid to contain the spread of devastating damage over the financial market.

Notified by MasterCard and Visa, local banks including HSBC, Hang Seng, Standard Chartered, Bank of China (Hong Kong), DBS, Citibank and Bank of East Asia announced yesterday that they had contacted cardholders to change brand new card numbers to avoid any further possible card data leakage.

MasterCard, the second-biggest credit card association, has notified its member banks of a security breach that may have exposed more than 40 million cards of all types to fraud last Friday. And Hong Kong is affected.

The total number of credit cards affected stands at 13.9 million, of which affected cards in Hong Kong account for 0.07 per cent, representing 9,700 credit cards, according to MasterCard Hong Kong.

Together with MasterCard, Visa and American Express, the total number of affected in Hong Kong could amount to 20,000, Visa and MasterCard have confirmed.

None of the Hong Kong banks disclosed the exact number of the cards affected but stressed that the number is not significant.

The security breach took place at CardSystems Solutions, a transactions processing company for financial institutions and merchants based in Arizona, US, with computer hacker stolen customer information.

CardSystems Solutions estimated that the credit card data of 200,000 individuals has been manipulated so far worldwide.

Cheung Nam-chung, senior manager of the Bank of Liu Chong Hing Ltd, advised that cardholders should change their pin numbers immediately.

"Cardholders also should better retain their receipts for reimbursement if found to be the victim of credit card fraud and get a new credit card number as soon as possible," Cheung noted.

A spokesperson for DBS said that only a few of its clients are affected by the incident and the clients do not need to bear any responsibility of loss relating to the data leakage.

A spokesperson for the Bank of East Asia said that no client has requested compensation because of the incident and the bank has only a few affected clients.

"The bank is processing for card replacement," the spokesperson said.

Citibank estimated that there could have been up to a few hundred affected customers at Citibank in Hong Kong and the bank is approaching affected customers for an immediate remedy such as replacing cards.

Clarifying the ambiguous responsibility of loss stemming from the data leakage, Hong Kong Monetary Authority made it clear yesterday that the credit card issuing bank is obliged to take full responsibility of systematic default if it resulted in a loss for credit card holders.

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