PayPal President's Credit Card Stolen: Hackers Skimmed And Cloned Card To Make Fraudulent Transactions

PayPal President David Marcus tweeted on Monday that his credit card had been stolen and used for a “ton” of fraudulent transactions.

Even though the card had an Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) chip -- a credit card security system used in Europe -- Marcus said the criminals likely got the information via skimming, the process of taking information from a card’s magnetic strip when it is swiped at an ATM of point-of-sale terminal. The same process was used to collect millions of credit card records from hacked Target POS machines during the holiday 2013 shopping season.

With that information in hand, it’s easy for criminals to make a new copy, or clone, of the card and use it for a shopping spree.

PayPal is trying to expand from the Internet into physical stores, and Marcus used the unfortunate situation as an opportunity to promote the benefits of PayPal.

The rise of mobile payment systems and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have somewhat eroded PayPal’s domination of the online payment business, as users are finding them to be more efficient way ways to make and accept electronic payments.

Do you think more storeowners should accept PayPal in their physical stores? Let us know in the comments.