Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Yahoo! Inc. disclosed Wednesday a breach of more than 1 billion user accounts in August 2013 that is separate from one involving 500 million accounts the Web giant announced in September. Yahoo said the new breach involved names, email addresses, birth dates, secure passwords, and security questions and answers, but did not involve payment card data or bank account information. Payment data was not stored in the system Yahoo believed was affected, it said.
• Night Light Security will introduce in February what it says will be the payments industry’s first device that can rapidly detect malware on point-of-sale systems and skimming devices on gas pumps and ATMs.
• Payments gateway Shift4 Corp. announced its EMV-certified payments service is available to users of Club Automation’s health-club management software.
• Payments provider Datacap Systems Inc. said it completed EMV level 3 certification with processor BluePay Processing LLC.
• Cloud-based hosting platform Go Daddy Inc. has added Apple Pay acceptance capability to its online store platform.
• E-commerce processor Digital River World Payments has integrated services from dLocal, a payments company specializing in Latin America. The deal is expected to extend Digital River’s ability to offer a money-remittance payment solution to online merchants wishing to reach Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, and other Latin American markets.
• Meta Financial Group Inc.’s MetaBank completed its previously announced, $15 million cash and stock acquisition of Specialty Consumer Services LP, which provides advances on tax refunds and other credit services. Specialty’s former owners could get up to $35 million in additional consideration if certain performance goals are met.
• CoinDesk, a Web site that reports on Bitcoin and the blockchain, has adopted a Bitcoin-based micropayments system from Brave Payments that will allow readers to pay the site for content free of third-party network ads.
• Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) announced the retirement of William A. Pruett, a 40-year TSYS veteran and president of its North America Services segment. The company will consolidate its North America and international services segments into one unit under Pruett, who will be succeeded April 1 by Gaylon Jowers.
