For thousands of Mastercard customers, 2023 started with good news.

Anyone who was affected by the data theft from the credit card provider in 2019 and made claims through service providers such as the European Society for Data Protection (EuGD) or Kleinfee can expect a payment of up to 300 euros.

This emerges from emails that customers have published on the Internet since the beginning of the week, despite confidentiality agreements.

Marcus Young

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

"We have reached an agreement in connection with a German program operated by a third party," a spokeswoman for Mastercard confirmed the settlement, which was first reported by "Spiegel Online".

According to this, Mastercard users registered with the EuGD will receive 300 euros if they accept the settlement offer in the coming days and refrain from pending civil lawsuits through their litigator.

Revision withdrawn

The revision of a Mastercard customer before the Federal Court of Justice, with which the woman demanded at least 5,000 euros in damages for data protection violations, has already been withdrawn.

With the help of the EuGD, the plaintiff went to the highest civil court.

Both the regional court and the higher regional court in Stuttgart had denied her a claim based on the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

Anyone who wants to continue to sue themselves will bear the cost risk themselves from now on. Because these are usually advanced by legal tech companies such as EuGD and Kleinfee or taken over by a litigation financier.

"We are very happy for those affected, whom we have accompanied through the legal process, that this procedure is now being completed," said Thomas Bindl, Managing Director of EuGD.

He feels strengthened for the ongoing proceedings due to further data leaks, such as those at Deezer, Facebook or Scalable Capital.

Around 2000 plaintiffs are registered with the EuGD in the Mastercard case.

If everyone agrees to the comparison, Mastercard must expect a payment of up to 600,000 euros plus a 25 percent fee to which the legal service provider is entitled as a commission per customer.

However, Mastercard can end all processes and prevent a supreme court judgment on damages after data protection violations.

A total of 90,000 users affected

In the summer of 2019, the data of 90,000 users of the German bonus program "Mastercard Priceless Specials" circulated online.

The financial group did not want to take responsibility at the time and blamed third-party partners.

Mastercard discontinued the program in the summer of 2020.

Regarding the current developments, Mastercard states that they take the issue of information security very seriously and are continuously working on innovations to further improve the protection of the personal data to be processed.