In an effort to quiet speculation within the security community, Visa has issued a statement denying that a new payment processor breach has occurred.

"The recent alerts Visa sent to card issuers were part of an existing investigation and are not related to a new compromise event," said the statement, issued late last week.

The development may clear up some confusion among banker associations, credit unions and industry observers, many of whom believed that another breach -- separate from the recently disclosed Heartland Payment Systems and RBS WorldPay -- had occurred. A number of groups such as the Community Bankers Association of Illinois, in fact, published alerts to members, implying that the breach was new.

Visa, however, did not say which processor was responsible for the investigation or how many records were compromised.

"Visa has provided the affected accounts to financial institutions so they can take steps to protect customers," the statement said. "In addition, Visa is risk-scoring all transactions in real-time, helping card issuers better distinguish fraud transactions from legitimate ones."