Chase Solves Data Breach by Setting Grinch Limits on Debit Purchases

There are a lot of different ways banks might deal with the recent Target database caper, but none of them are quite as Grinch-like as ravenous bank monster JPMorgan Chase’s decision to cap debit card cash withdrawal limits at $100 a day and card purchases at $300 a day.

According to CBS, the new limits affect about two million Chase customers, or, in pie-chart-friendly terms, about 10 percent of all Chase customers. Chase explained that the new limits are a security precaution aimed at preventing criminals from scooping money out of customer bank accounts, and acknowledged that the card caps may come at a pretty inconvenient time for a lot of shoppers, but that, you know, last-minute shoppers need to learn a lesson about procrastination, don’t they?

Representatives for other major banks also assured customers that they were taking additional security measures, but none had adopted Chase’s broad, scorched-earth policy of limiting cardholders to smaller withdrawal and purchase amounts (the normal cash withdrawal and purchase limits for Chase’s debit cardholders are $200 and $500, respectively).