Global Payments Inc., an Atlanta based processing firm had a data breach which was first announced in April of 2012. Global payments serve as a middleman between merchants and banks and process payments for visa and MasterCard. It is one of the world’s largest electronic transaction processing companies. This security breach may have compromised millions of debit and credit cards. According to Brian Krebs this shady activity was discovered in early March, though the break is suspected to have occurred between January 21 and February 25. The Global Payments stock fell more than 9 percent on news of its involvement in the data breach before trading on it was halted about noon. Both MasterCard and Visa were quick to assure customers that their own systems remained safe and that they had alerted banks to any potential problems. Global payments said it had determined early March that “card data may have been accessed.” It said the company officials immediately contacted federal law enforcement, brought in information technology forensics experts to investigate and notified “appropriate industry parties to allow them to minimize potential cardholder impact.” “It is reassuring that our security processes detected an intrusion. It is crucial to understand that this incident does not involve our merchants or their relationships with their customers,” Global Payments chief executive Paul Garcia said. Visa and MasterCard determine the extent of a possible security breach at a third-party vendor that experts say could compromise the credit-card and debit-card information of millions of Americans. The two companies say they have notified law enforcement officials and alerted banks about the potential data theft, even as they seek to assure customers that their own systems had not been breached. Both companies emphasized that customers are not held responsible for