Merchant personal data may have been stolen from Global Payments

Hackers might have stolen the personal information of individuals who applied for a merchant account with card payment processor Global Payments.

"We have recently learned of potential unauthorized access to servers containing personal information from a subset of merchant applicants," Paul Garcia, Global Payments' chairman and CEO, said during a conference call with shareholders on Tuesday.

Affected individuals will be offered free credit monitoring services and identity protection insurance of $1 million. The three U.S. major credit reporting agencies have also been advised about the incident, Garcia said.

Garcia declined to share an exact number of individuals potentially affected by the unauthorized access to servers that contained merchant data, citing an ongoing process of analyzing that information.

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