In what is the first reported major credit card data theft for 2012, Mastercard and Visa have issued warnings to banks all over the USA. Brian Krebs, the ex Washington Post investigative reporter reported on the breach first this morning on his blog, says that up to 10 million consumers may be affected because of the data theft from Global Payments, a company that processes transactions as part of the payment chain between vendors and the banks.
About 10 months ago the card data of about 200000 consumers was stolen during a breach of the Citigroup network.
This present theft will affect South African consumers that traded with vendors using Global Payments, There are just under 23 million registered credit card vendors in the United States of America and Global Payments only service just over 3 percent of that market. Global Payments is expected to earn profits in excess of 2 Billion US Dollars this year.