Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

A new report about data breaches from a law firm that analyzed compromises affecting more than 300 of its clients in 2015 has some unique perspectives that supplement findings from data-security technology firms such as Mandiant and Trustwave or telecommunications giant Verizon, all of which have produced widely read summaries …

Six months after the U.S. payment card industry adopted EMV chip card transactions as the preferred card technology, MasterCard Inc. says 67% of U.S.-issued consumer credit cards bearing its mark have chips, and 1.2 million U.S. merchant locations now accept the card. The data comes six months after the Oct. …

• Prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. acquired extrameasures LLC, a promotions and incentives firm that offers Visa-branded and private-label rewards and gift cards. The deal follows Blackhawk’s acquisitions of other incentives companies, including Parago, InteliSpend, CardLab, and Incentive Solutions.   • Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. …

Do competing acquirers run a significant risk if they ignore the way Square Inc. operates? Some experts are now saying they do, though you wouldn’t think so in the light of recent events. When 6-year-old Square went public in November, the result was bloody. On the first day of trading, …

The U.S. payments industry is keeping a watchful eye on friendly-fraud chargebacks now that the EMV liability shift is in effect. According to software enterprise CA Technologies, global card-not-present fraud by 2018 will be at least double the $2.9 billion logged in 2014. Fraudulent chargebacks, always a risk for sellers, …

Contrary to what many may suspect, price is not the top reason retailers switch from one point-of-sale provider to another, according to a study from Capterra Inc., a business-software review site. In a survey of more than 400 merchants, 34% cited a POS system’s lack of necessary features as the …

• Braintree launched Braintree Auth as an invitation-only service in beta. The service streamlines integration of Braintree merchants with e-commerce platforms and eases the way for new payment methods enabled by Braintree, a unit of PayPal Holdings Inc. Braintree Auth currently processes payments on e-commerce platforms Bigcommerce, WooCommerce, and 3DCart. …

For years, the wave of fraud receded like an outgoing tide for companies that accepted electronic payments from consumers and other businesses. But last year, a tidal wave crashed on shore. Fully 73% of companies reported they had suffered actual or attempted payments fraud in 2015, up 11 percentage points …

While many ATM operators know what hardware and software their fleets need to enable EMV chip card acceptance, most are waiting to fully upgrade until concerns about routing issues, chargeback rates, and continuing uncertainty subside, according to the 2016 ATM Channel EMV Readiness survey from the ATM Industry Association. Like …

• The Federal Reserve picked consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to support its Faster Payments Task Force efforts this year by assessing solution proposals from various payments providers. • Merchant processor Square Inc. announced its “Build With Square,” a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that integrates point-of-sale and-online payments capabilities with …

EMVCo, the chip card standards body owned by the world’s largest payment card networks, on Tuesday formally updated its tokenization specification to include the new Payment Account Reference data element. The purpose of PAR is to match tokens to the underlying primary account number of a credit or debit card …

• Nearly half—48%—of ATM operators did not have EMV acceptance enabled on their machines at the end of 2015, finds the 2016 ATM Channel EMV Readiness Survey released by the ATM Industry Association. Fourteen months ago, the survey predicted that figure would be 12%. Continuing uncertainty and confusion, routing issues, and …

There’s no turning back from the mobile phenomenon for financial transactions as a new survey finds that 41% of consumers use their smart phones to make bank transactions, such as person-to-person payments, paying bills, and making check deposits, up from 36% in 2014, says consultancy Mercator Advisory Group Inc. While …

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s shares took a hit last week when a media report said Apple Inc. plans to launch a mobile-browser version of its Apple Pay service, potentially making Apple Pay a stronger competitor to the online and mobile-payments leader. But a payments analyst says any new competition from Apple …

Once widely disparaged as an unwieldy fraud solution, 3-D Secure is back on the radar screens of risk managers at major online merchants and card issuers. Improvements in the 15-year-old technology, combined with surging e-commerce fraud, are driving the renewed interest, experts say. “Two-and-a-half years ago, zero U.S. online merchants …

Acquirers and financial institutions can put consumer and merchant affinity for smart phones to work for them when trying to comply with anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer regulations. Smart-phone activity, whether it’s purchasing behavior, location habits, or personally identifiable information associated with the wireless carrier account, can be used to vet the …

  Not yet five years after its implementation, a controversial federal regulation governing interchange and transaction routing for debit cards has come under review as part of a process set out by a 20-year-old law called the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act. The debit card regulation, the Federal …

Industry efforts to persuade consumers to use credit and debit cards for small-ticket purchases may be paying off, at least among younger consumers, finds a survey from CreditCards.com, a card comparison site for consumers. In the survey of more than 600 U.S. adult credit card holders sampled in early March, …

If consumers wanted a mobile wallet in 2013 and 2014, they wanted it from their primary financial institution. But things changed in 2015, when PayPal and Visa surpassed banks and credit unions as preferred wallet providers. That’s the bad news for financial institutions in a new report about mobile wallets …