Monday, Atlanta-based Global Payments disclosed that hackers accessed their systems and stole credit and debit card account information for almost 1.5 million customers. Although spokespeople form their outfit have been claiming the event has been “contained” others see this as a shakeup for the financial security sector.  News is coming out from USA Today and The Wall Street Journal and it looks a bit grim for the payment processor.

In a press conference about the incident, Global Payments CEO Paul Garcia said, “it is reassuring that our security processes detected an intrusion,” also referencing that only a handful of their North American servers had been breached. However, it’s also been discovered that hackers not only managed to gain access to the credit card information—they also exfiltrated a copy of it.

This incident potentially affects cards bearing the logos of Visa, Mastercard, as well as Discover and American Express. While the hacker-thieves managed to abscond with credit card numbers and expiration dates, the company has assured the media that they had no access to card holder names, addresses, or social security numbers—but they information they did take could still be used to forge credit card credentials.

Due to their high position as a credit card processor, this sort of damage to Global Payments is being seen as a dark omen by many. The Wall Street Journal reports,

Global Payments ranks as the seventh-largest processor that handles transactions on behalf of merchants and other entities involved in payments, according to the Nilson Report, a Carpinteria, Calif.-based newsletter that tracks the payments industry. In addition to Caesars and FTD, customers include the state of New York and numerous small casinos, according to company news releases and contracts.

In the wake of the breach, Global Payments has seen their stock prices fall almost 9% on Friday and 3.5% further on Monday.

Also in the wake of the intrusion, Visa removed Global Payments from a registry of partners who meet data security standards—although they still process payments from them. MasterCard has responded by posting a warning to their customers to watch their finances and included tips on how to identify if they’ve been hit.

This credit card processor is not alone in being hit as we’ve seen hit with hackers stealing credit card information, although usually it’s websites that take that information and store it that are more likely to become victims. In March, a hacker group broke into the Digital Playground pornography site and swiped 72,000 credit card numbers; and in January Saudi hackers hit Israeli websites and leaked 400,000 credit cards. Even Anonymous has gotten into this particular theatrical action when they hit the US security think tank Stratfor last year on Christmas costing almost $700,000 in fraudulent transactions.

As the affected party, Global Payments has stated that they’re seeking aid from “multiple information security and forensics firms” and continue to do an internal audit of their security to determine the extent of the breach, how it happened, and how to prevent it in the future.