Visa and American Express Dump Security Blackhole CardSystems   7/20/2005 - 1,742 views,

You may recall that CardSystems, Inc. was recently sued as a result of a security breach which lead to the compromise of the credit card data of 40million credit card holders. Data which CardSystems was not supposed to have!

In explaining their decision, Visa spokeperson Rosetta Jones explained that CardSystems “has not corrected, and cannot at this point correct, the failure to provide proper data security for Visa accounts,” and further explained that while CardSystems may have taken some steps to increase security after the fact, they could not ameliorate the fact that they were improperly holding the account information in the first place.

MasterCard has given CardSystems until August 31st to clean up their act. “However,” said MasterCard spokeperson Sharon Gamsin, “if CardSystems cannot demonstrate that they are in compliance by that date, their ability to provide services to MasterCard members will be at risk.”

CardSystems said that they are “disappointed and very surprised” by Visa’s decision. Aunty, frankly, is more surprised by MasterCard’s.