A large number of local check card holders will receive new cards after hackers accessed as many as 8 million credit card numbers through an outside vendor last week.

Rob Rutz, PNC Bank spokesman for central Pennsylvania, said 11,000 PNC Visa check cards were compromised by the hackers. Ninety-six of those were in the State College area, he said.

"We took the side of caution and decided to go ahead and reissue those cards," Rutz said.

PNC began printing as many as 10,000 new cards Thursday night, he said. Rutz said the bank decided to aggressively address the issue to protect its customers.

The nearly 8 million account numbers were accessed through Data Processors International, a company based in Omaha, Neb., which services telephone and mail-order merchants. Rutz said PNC Bank issues check cards with the Visa brand name, but other global companies such as MasterCard could have been affected.

Sovereign Bank, which uses MasterCard, is also reissuing cards, spokeswoman Ellen Molle said. She did not have information as far as how many local customers may have been affected, but she said only a small fraction of Sovereign's card base was affected.

Molle said only card numbers and expiration dates were accessed, and as far as Sovereign is aware, no account numbers, names or pin numbers have been compromised.

Nittany Bank Vice President Ginny McAdoo said the institution's MasterCard check cards were not affected by the hackers. "As far as I'm aware it was a Visa network issue and not MasterCard," McAdoo said.

First Commonwealth Bank in State College, which also uses MasterCard, said it was not affected.

Customers of PNC Bank whose cards will be reissued are being phoned immediately, Rutz said. He added that the bank expects to have contacted every one of them by today.

As of Friday, Rutz said PNC was not aware of any fraudulent activity stemming from the incident. He said Visa has a zero liability policy, which means if any accounts are illegally accessed, the cardholder will not have to pay for fraudulent transactions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.