Local banks are keeping an eye on any suspect credit-card transactions to protect consumers' interest, Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) Chief Executive Joseph Yam said on Tuesday.

About 20,000 Hong Kong credit-card accounts are at risk following the world's largest theft of the electronic payment data from the Atlantic-based CardSystems Solutions, who processes retail credit transaction for Visa, MasterCard and other credit cards.

The leak of electronic data has exposed 40 million customers worldwide to fraud in total.

Visa said 9,000 Hong Kong accounts were at risk out of the total 22 million Visa cards affected worldwide. MasterCard said that the number of Hong Kong customer accounts at risk stood at 9, 730 of the total of 13,9 million affected worldwide.

Yam urged people who have used credit cards in the United States recently to pay close attention to their monthly statements.

Yam said local banks have been closely monitoring the situation to protect credit-card holders from having personal details leaked. They will contact customers at once if there are any suspect transactions.

So far there are no reports regarding the leakage of local credit-card holders' details, though there are one or two card holders who suspect they have been affected by the fiasco, he added.

According to the Code of Banking Practice in Hong Kong, card issuers will bear the full loss incurred when faults have occurred in terminals, or other systems used, which cause cardholders to suffer direct loss unless the fault is obvious or advised by a message or notice on display.

Source: Xinhua