Whole Food Taprooms And Restaurants Hacked, $AMZN Investigating

Whole Foods Market says it’s investigating a potential hack or theft of customer payment card information at in-store taprooms and restaurants.

In a news release on Thursday, the Amazon.com-owned grocer said it had recently been informed about unauthorized use of payment cards that had been used at taprooms and table-service restaurants inside some stores. Those venues used a different point of sale system than the company’s primary checkout system, Whole Foods said.

And Amazon, which sealed its $13.5 billion deal to buy the high-end grocer in August, does not link its network to those Whole Foods systems. Transactions on the retailer’s website are not affected, Whole Foods said.

The disclosure follows a series of high-profile breaches in which credit card or other customer data were stolen from corporate hands, often via weaknesses in Internet-linked systems.