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Foreign Currency Service, Travelex Down After Cyberattack

Published on 2020-01-02T20:10:18 by Lisa Schleifer

The worldwide currency exchange, Travelex, websites, and services were down on Thursday, January 2nd after the foreign currency service discovered it had been hit by a cyber attack.

The company said it had immediately taken all of its systems offline “as a precautionary measure in order to protect data and prevent the spread of the virus” after learning of the attack on New Year’s Eve.

The early results of its investigation show no signs that personal or customer data were compromised. Travelex has deployed IT specialists and external cybersecurity experts to help restore affected systems and “isolate the virus.”

“We regret having to suspend some of our services in order to contain the virus and protect data. We apologize to all our customers for any inconvenience caused as a result. We are doing all we can to restore our full services as soon as possible,” said Tony D’Souza, chief executive of Travelex.

Users navigating to Travelex’s online exchange services were instead greeted with a message that read: “Our online, foreign currency purchasing service is temporarily unavailable due to planned maintenance. The system will be back online shortly.”

Branches are manually handling exchange services while online systems are down, the group said.

“We are aware of this incident and working closely with the affected organization to understand its impact,” a spokesperson for the National Cyber Security Centre said.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority said: “We are in contact with the firm over the issue and expect them to treat affected customers fairly.”

Travelex, the world’s largest retail currency dealer, is one of the flagship brands owned by Finablr, which is publicly traded in London and based in the United Arab Emirates. News of the cyber attack came after the markets had closed in London, and Finablr’s shares closed up 1.6 per cent for the day.