When payment processor Heartland Payment Systems announced it had been breached on January 20, management at Valley National Bank in New Jersey went into action. By January 26, they had notified the New York State Attorney General’s Office that they were replacing 20,013 cards as a result of the breach and had kicked into high gear to notify customers and replace cards.
Customers of the bank should be receiving letters today.
According to a bank spokesperson, after learning of the breach, the bank decided to take no chances and to just replace all cards. To date, the bank has had no report of any fraudulent use of any of the cards that had been listed as being affected.
Jason Maloni, spokesperson for Heartland Payment Systems, indicated to me that anecdotally, they continue to have relatively few reports of actual fraud as a result of the breach. Prior to Visa notifying them on October 28, 2008 there may have been 1,000 suspicious incidents that led to Visa eventually identifying Heartland as the source of the breach. Since the breach was revealed, however, very few banks have reported actual fraudulent charges that may have been due to the breach. Most, like Valley National, seem to be replacing cards out of caution.