Visa to cut ties with card processor at center of massive breach

<p>Visa USA Inc. is cutting ties with the payment-processing company that left 40 million credit and debit card accounts vulnerable to hackers in one of the biggest breaches of consumer data security.</p><p>CardSystems Solutions Inc. "has not corrected, and cannot at this point correct, the failure to provide proper data security for Visa accounts," Rosetta Jones, a Visa vice president, said in a statement.</p><p>She said banks that issue Visa cards would have until Oct. 31 to cease having CardSystems process payments.</p><p>Representatives for Atlanta-based CardSystems did not immediately return a call seeking comment.</p><p>Visa's statement said that while CardSystems has taken some remediating actions since the breach was disclosed, those could not overcome the fact that CardSystems had inappropriately held on to data _ purportedly for "research purposes" _ in violation of Visa's security rules.</p><p>While information relating to 40 million accounts were laid bare in the CardSystems computer break-in, credit card companies have said a much smaller amount, at least 200,000, were known to be stolen, primarily MasterCard and Visa cards.</p><p>Spokeswomen for MasterCard International Inc., American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services Inc. did not immediately say whether they would take similar steps to ban CardSystems.</p><p>CardSystems has been in business for more than 15 years and handles transactions for more than 105,000 small to mid-sized businesses, according to the company. It says it processes transactions worth more than $15 billion annually.</p>