The media attention on the Equifax breach has been primarily on consumer harm. There's real consumer harm, but it's generally not direct pecuniary harm. Instead, the direct pecuniary harm from the breach will be borne by banks and merchants, and it's going to expose the move to Chip (EMV) cards in the United States without an accompanying move to PIN (as in Chip-and-PIN) to be an incredibly costly blunder by US banks. Basically, Visa, Mastercard, and Amex have built the commercial equivalent of the Maginot Line.
