Latitude cyber hack hits retailers as payments platform taken offline

The Latitude Financial hack is threatening to impact retail partners such as JB Hi-Fi, Good Guys and Harvey Norman as the platform is temporarily taken offline.

JB Hi-Fi CEO Terry Smart says rising cyber attacks are a growing concern for all retailers. Picture: Arsineh Houspian.

JB Hi-Fi chief executive Terry Smart said the consumer electronics retailer as well as its whitegoods arm, The Good Guys, would not be overly impacted by the cyber attack on payments platform Latitude Financial.

The rise in cybercrime however, remained a concern for retailers, he said.

The widening problems now plaguing the cyber attack on Latitude last week - which saw the records of as many as 328,000 customers stolen - have begun to impact major retail chains that offer Latitude financial services such as interest free offers after Latitude was forced to take its platforms offline.

This will affect retailer merchants and customers with only a limited number of transactions able to be processed and it remains unable to add new customers due to isolating some of its technology platforms.

For Latitude’s retail partners such as JB Hi-Fi, Good Guys, Harvey Norman and Apple the shutdown and adding new customers could threaten sales as many retail chains use Latitude’s popular payment products such as no deposit, interest free deals to attract customers and drive sales, especially of big-ticket items.

Mr Smart, the CEO of JB Hi-Fi which also owns the Good Guys, told The Australian its sales sourced from Latitude products was small, although he declined to declare what proportion of the consumer electronics and whitegoods retailer’s annual revenue were generated by the financial services provider.

“It‘s a payment option that we do offer. We don’t heavily promote it under normal circumstances. So that’s why we feel it won’t have an impact,” Mr Smart told The Australian.

The JB Hi-Fi website does offer a range of services under the Latitude banner such as interest free deals and Latitude Gem Visa and Latitude GO MasterCard sign ups. The Good Guys website advertises Latitude interest free finance deals from six to 50 months.

“We don’t disclose the proportion of sales (from Latitude) but it is very small,” Mr Smart said.

“Overall it does form part of an overall payment option and we would like to see it there … but it is not really of a major concern and we anticipate that it will be coming back online in the very near future.”

Mr Smart said all retailers were concerned at the moment about cyber attacks and cyber security.

“It is a concern all round re cyber crime whether you are a retailer or in another industry.”

Furniture, whitegoods, consumer electronics and homewares retailer Harvey Norman has had a relationship with Latitude and before that its predecessor GE Money for decades and often highlights the financial services company’s interest free deals in its TV, radio and print advertising. A spokeswoman for Harvey Norman declined to comment on the Latitude cyber attack.

Latitude recently inked a deal with David Jones to provide credit cards and other financial services to customers of the department store.

David Jones chief executive Scott Fyfe with Latitude Financial chief executive Ahmed Fahour.

A David Jones spokesman said no David Jones customer data had been compromised in the course of this incident because the retailer have not yet transitioned its card program to Latitude. That will happen in 2024.

“We are confident that Latitude is taking all the necessary steps to respond to last week’s cyber attack. This will not impact our partnership with Latitude or the timelines we currently are working towards launch.

“We will ensure we have robust measures in place to prevent any future data breaches. When we move our customer data across next year, we will conduct deep security testing, including via independent audit.”

Last week’s cyber attack in which almost 330,000 identification documents were stolen, has affected historical customers – and a number of copies of passports and Medicare cards have been exposed.

The attack has resulted in the theft of about 315,000 copies of driver‘s licences being stolen, about 10,000 copies of passports and about 3000 copies of Medicare numbers, according to an update by the company.

The hack is still active, according to Latitude’s early investigation and the incident is the subject of an Australian Federal Police investigation.

Latitude chief executive Ahmed Fahour said Latitude had no choice but to shut down a number of services.

“While we continue to deliver transactional services, some functionality has been affected resulting in disruption,” Mr Fahour said.

“We are working extremely hard to restore full services to our customers and merchant partners, and thank them for their patience and support.”