Nordea Bank is to replace hundreds of MasterCard credit cards held by Finnish customers as a precaution against possible fraud.
The bank believes that credit card details have fallen into the wrong hands abroad and that cards have been copied.
According to Markku Siitonen, Head of Cards at Nordea Finland, the number of cards that may have been compromised in this way is less than 500.
Cardholders have been sent a letter on the subject, and in the great majority of cases the cards will be changed.
Other MasterCard holders need not take any action.
Nordea has described the moves as a precaution to prevent possible abuse of the cards. Markku Siitonen said the bank was not certain that there would even have been any attempts to use the affected cards fraudulently.
What makes this incident somewhat exceptional is the sizeable number of cards that have been flagged up as under suspicion.
Usually cases of copying and fraudulent use are isolated and limited to a few individual cards.
The suspicions have arisen on foreign trips. According to Siitonen, no one specific country can be named.
Nordea were notified of the possible breach by MasterCard.
The cardholder in cases such as this is not liable for the criminal use of his or her card.
"All payments arising out of this kind of credit card fraud end up as the responsibility of the issuing bank, in this case Nordea Finland. The customer never has to pick up the tab for illicit use", says Siitonen.
The matter was first brought to light by the regional newspaper Karjalainen, published in Joensuu.
