More than 200 Bank of Bermuda customers are to have their Visa and EasyLink cards re-issued after a security blip in Canada may have compromised their accounts.

The bank has been informed by Visa that some of its customers may have fallen victim to a potential fraud after criminals may have hacked into the computer system of a business overseas, accessing account details.

All those people in Bermuda believed to have had business dealings with the Canadian company involved, where credit or debit card details were given, are now being informed and are having their cards re-issued, purely as a precaution.

However, there has been no evidence so far that any of the 230 Bermudian accounts involved have been tampered with in any way.

And it is likely that other customers in other countries are now also being informed. Wayne Pimentel, manager of the card processing centre at Bank of Bermuda, said: "Bank of Bermuda has received notification from Visa that, as a result of a security compromise in Canada, a number of credit card and EasyLink card numbers may have been exposed to potential fraud.

"To date, the information we have from Visa is not detailed as their investigation is still underway. We wish to re-assure our customers that we are working to safeguard them against this risk by immediately closing the card accounts, which may have been compromised. We are in the process of contacting clients and issuing new cards.

"Although 230 Bank of Bermuda clients have been affected so far, as yet we have seen no evidence of fraud on the compromised cards."

But Mr. Pimentel said as a general precaution, the bank advised all clients to review their statements vigilantly for fraudulent transactions and to contact the bank immediately if they detected anything suspicious.

And he said clients who could access EasyLink Online were reminded that they could review up-to-date statements of their accounts at any time.

Although security blips do not happen regularly, this is not the first time that Visa or similar credit card companies have had to warn banks worldwide of possible fraudulent acts.

A credit card company can suspect very quickly that a problem exists and may suspect hackers, and so notifies the banks and issuers of their cards, so swift action can be taken.

They inform the banks which of their customers have done business with the particular company at risk, be it a restaurant, hotel or mail order company where hackers have struck, and who therefore may have been affected.

So, new cards and details can be issued and customers informed immediately.

However, it does not mean that each or any of the customers on the list will have been victimised and will have lost cash.