The fast food chain Wendy's said it is investigating a possible credit card breach at various East Coast and Midwest restaurant locations in response to fraud reports from various sources within the financial industry.

Bob Bertini, a spokesperson for Wendy's, said the company started getting reports earlier in January from payment industry contacts about a potential breach. Wendy's then hired a security firm to look into the claims. It is too soon, however, to determine the scope of the incident, whether it's been contained, how long it may have persisted and how many stores may have been affected.

"Reports indicate that fraudulent charges may have occurred elsewhere after the cards were legitimately used at some of our restaurants," Bertini said in a prepared statement. "We've hired a cybersecurity firm and launched a comprehensive and active investigation that's underway to try to determine the facts. We began investigating immediately, and the period of time we're looking at [for] the incidents is late last year, we know it's [affecting] some restaurants but it's not appropriate just yet to speculate on anything in terms of scope."