As reported on January 22, 2009, Visa has informed Scott Valley Bank that it is working with law enforcement and Heartland Payment Systems, a U.S.- based card processing service, to investigate a compromise of card account information from the card processing service’s systems.  News reports indicated that this compromise occurred in 2008 and involved the "sniffing" of transactions between Heartland and the various merchants that use it for processing payments. Scott Valley Bank’s systems and information were not compromised.

Over the past 3 weeks, Scott Valley Bank has been notified by Visa which of its cardholders may have utilized one or more of the merchants that processed through Heartland.

Here are the steps we have taken:  As we received each list from Visa, our branches were notified which, if any, of their clients were affected.  Representatives from the branches then reached out to their clients by telephone.  Scott Valley Bank has detected no fraud on any affected accounts, so, for the convenience of our clients, we were able to extend to our clients the option to close their card immediately or keep it active for up to 10 days to allow for a new card to arrive.  The Bank’s Central Services Department, meanwhile, prepared and sent out notification letters to each client and began the process of issuing new cards. The process of issuing new cards takes 7-10 business days.  

If you receive, or have received, a notification letter from us and have not already spoken with a representative from your branch and you would like your card inactivated immediately, let us know by calling your local branch or 1-888-385-7111 option 2.

If you have not received a letter but are concerned regarding whether or not your card information was compromised in the Heartland breach, please feel welcome to call your local branch and ask.  You will be asked to provide your name and the last 6 digits of your card number.  Our reference lists have been continually updated as we received information from Visa.  Visa has indicated to us that all information on the Heartland breach has now been distributed.

It is important for our consumer cardholders to know that they are protected against fraudulent purchases with Visa’s Zero Liability† policy. In addition to that, Scott Valley Bank has its own fraud monitoring service to protect your account. As always, we encourage all our cardholders to carefully review their statements and to let us know right away if they see any charges they don’t recognize.

† Covers U.S.-issued cards only. Visa’s Zero Liability policy does not apply to ATM transactions or PIN transactions not processed by Visa and certain commercial card transactions. Cardholder must notify issuer promptly of any unauthorized use. Consult issuer for additional details or visit