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MoneyGram Confirms Hackers Stole Customer Data

The September 2024 cyberattack affected both personal and transactional information, impacting customer ID numbers, financial data, and more.

Published

2 years ago

October 9, 2024

Nour Nasir

moneygram confirms hackers stole customer data

Finance platform MoneyGram has revealed that hackers accessed and stole customer data — including personal and transactional information — in a recent cyberattack. The company disclosed on Monday that an unauthorized party “accessed and acquired” this information during a cyber incident on September 20. The breach also caused a week-long outage, which took down the company’s website and mobile app.

MoneyGram, which is used by over 50 million customers across more than 200 countries annually, said the investigation into the breach was still in its early stages. Experts have yet to determine the full extent of the data hack, with MoneyGram spokesperson Sydney Schoolfield so far declining to comment beyond the company’s public statement.

According to MoneyGram, the stolen data includes various personal details, such as names, phone numbers, postal and email addresses, dates of birth, and national identification numbers. A “limited number” of Social Security numbers and government-issued identification documents, including driver’s licenses and other personal documents, were also exposed. The specific types of stolen data will vary depending on the individual customer.

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Additionally, the hackers obtained transaction information, including dates and amounts, along with criminal investigation data related to fraud for some customers.

Related Topics:Cybersecurity Hacking MoneyGram

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News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

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The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.