Bank of Hawaii and First Hawaiian Bank have blocked debit and credit cards for an unspecified number of customers as a precaution after a restaurant on Oahu had its computer system breached.
"As a proactive measure and a precaution to help protect our customers, we blocked customers’ cards who we knew patronized that restaurant during a certain time period in February," Bankoh spokesman Stafford Kiguchi said Thursday. "However, not all of those cards would have been necessarily compromised."
Kiguchi declined to identify the restaurant.
Bankoh said it blocked debit cards of more than 200 customers and will change the card number on the front of the affected cards but that the account number it is linked to, such as a checking account, will stay the same.
First Hawaiian spokesman Brandt Farias said the bank "blocked and replaced a handful" of debit and credit cards, but offered no more specific information. He said the bank will follow the same replacement procedure as Bankoh.
"As a card issuer we occasionally deal with credit card fraud," Farias added.
First Hawaiian is the state’s largest bank with $16.6 billion in assets and the state’s largest local card processor of merchant services. Bank of Hawaii is the state’s second-largest bank with $13.7 billion in assets.
The computer used by the restaurant may not have been updated with the proper security update when the cards were swiped, according to a local law enforcement official.
"This is a fairly common occurrence," he said. "It’s all done on the Internet, and it’s not anybody’s fault in particular. The crooks exploit weakness in the Internet and the computer system. Most of the suspects are out of the country, and when the cards are used, they’re often used at a site distant from the source of compromise or at a foreign destination."
Kiguchi said Bankoh doesn’t handle merchant card processing services for the restaurant, but that some of the bank’s customers had been customers at the restaurant during a specific period and later found unauthorized charges on their accounts.
Central Pacific Bank, the state’s fourth-largest bank, said it wasn’t affected, while American Savings Bank, the No. 3 bank, didn’t respond to an inquiry seeking comment.
Kiguchi said Bankoh is encouraging customers to check their accounts.
"If there are incorrect charges based on this incident, we ask that they notify us in a timely manner, and they will not be liable for those charges," he said.
