Bank of America (BAC) is replacing credit or debit cards for some its customers in the Midwest because of concern that their accounts may have been compromised, KMOX is reporting.
The nation's second-biggest bank alerted some cardholders in the St. Louis recently that the company had disabled their accounts and issued them replacement cards, according to the all-news radio station.
A Bank of America spokeswoman declined to say whether the bank reached out to customers but said it periodically receives alerts from companies like Visa (NYSE:V) and MasterCard (MA) about account information being exposed at merchants' locations.
In those cases, Bank of America will notify cardholders and block and reissue their cards. "We take these proactive steps to protect our customers and minimize any occurrence of fraud," Bank of America spokeswoman Betty Reiss said in an email. "It doesn't necessarily mean that fraud has actually occurred on the account."
Reiss added that the alerts from the payments companies do not reveal the location where the compromise was thought to have occurred. "We couldn't comment on a specific source of a breach, but it's important to understand that this was not a compromise specific to Bank of America cards or of the bank's system," Reiss added. "Other issuers receive the same alerts."
St. Louis-based grocery store chain Schnucks said recently that roughly 2.4 million credit and debit cards at 79 of its 100 stores may been compromised over a three-month period starting in December. The breach resulted in card numbers and expiration dates being revealed but did not include cardholders' names, addresses and other information, Schnucks said in a press release.
Other banks that have multiple locations in St. Louis say they have contacted some cardholders there following the data breach at Schnucks. “We have taken appropriate steps to protect our customers in this case, including reissuing some cards,” U.S. Bank spokeswoman Nicole Garrison-Sprenger, said in an email.
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