We couldn’t recruit David Letterman to help us with this article, but what follows are the Top 10 U.S. payments events of 2013 as identified by the Retail Payments Risk Forum, a research and industry-dialogue unit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. 10. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized …
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Target Confirms Encrypted PINs Stolen As Part of Breach, Says Debit Accounts Remain ‘Safe’
Target Corp. on Friday confirmed that data thieves obtained customers’ encrypted debit card PINs, but said the sensitive numbers remain useless to the criminals because of the technology masking them. ”While we previously shared that encrypted data was obtained, this morning through additional forensics work we were able to confirm …
Read More »Target Denies Reports That Data Thieves’ Haul Included PINs
Target Corp. is denying a widely circulated report that the information stolen by cyber criminals in a massive breach of credit and debit card data included customer’s debit card PINs Citing a “senior payments executive familiar with the situation,” Reuters reported early Christmas Day that the data thieves have the …
Read More »Phishers and Scammers Follow in the Wake of the Target Breach
Target Corp. issued another update on the breach of its point-of-sale systems saying that phishers are using the incident to trick consumers into revealing sensitive information. The basic modus operandi of phishers is to send mass emails in the name of a financial institution or other company to consumers, asking them …
Read More »Target Talks With Attorneys General; Says Malware Was Involved in Data Breach
Target Corp. on Monday held a conference call with state attorneys general and said malware was involved in its data breach that compromised up to 40 million credit and debit card accounts. The new developments follow the discount-store chain’s disclosure Thursday of a breach in the point-of-sale system for its …
Read More »DoubleBeam Buys GoPago’s POS Business; Amazon May Have a Piece, Too
DoubleBeam Inc., a mobile retail and point-of-sale company, has bought mobile POS system maker GoPago for an undisclosed sum. This counters a report last week that suggested e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. acquired GoPago. San Francisco-based GoPago, founded in 2009 and backed by a 2012 investment of an undisclosed amount from …
Read More »Target Says Little Fraud And No Apparent PIN Theft Resulting From Data Breach So Far
In the wake of the huge payment card data breach it confirmed Thursday, big-box retailer Target Corp. today said that so far it has received few reports of fraud resulting from the breach. The retailer also said that while hackers obtained considerable customer data on approximately 40 million credit and …
Read More »Payment Card Data Hackers Put Big-Box Retailer Target in Their Cross-Hairs
It had been fairly quiet on the retailer data-breach front for quite some time until Wednesday, when news broke that Target Corp. had suffered what apparently was a major breach of magnetic-stripe data from payment cards. Target confirmed Thursday that the breach potentially compromised 40 million credit and debit accounts, …
Read More »Fed Report: Plastic Strengthens Its Grip on Payments As Credit Cards Resume Growth
More than ever, plastic dominates the business of electronic payments in the United States, with two-thirds of all noncash transactions in 2012 occurring on a card, up substantially from 60% just three years earlier. That’s according to the Federal Reserve System’s triennial payments study, released Thursday. The sweeping research report, …
Read More »PayPal Picks up StackMob In Bid to Streamline Payments Features for Mobile Apps
PayPal Inc.’s acquisition of mobile developer StackMob Inc. may help it build a talent pool to more quickly and easily deploy mobile apps, suggests one analyst. n “We are building one of the most modern, advanced development environment and infrastructure in the payments industry,” a PayPal spokesperson says. “We believe …
Read More »VeriFone’s New CEO Outlines His Plans To Get the Terminal Maker Back on Track
Paul Galant, the new chief executive of payment-processing hardware and software maker VeriFone Systems Inc., says he’s committed to increasing research and development, rationalizing VeriFone’s sprawling product lines, and becoming “more nimble and more focused on our strengths.” Galant, a former senior Citigroup Inc. executive who took the helm 78 …
Read More »Amazon’s Apparent GoPago Deal Could Presage Move Into Brick-And-Mortar POS, Experts Say
Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. appears to have bought tablet and mobile point-of-sale provider GoPago Inc., according to a report in La Repubblica, an Italy-based newspaper. In the report, Vincenzo Di Nicola, a GoPago co-founder and its chief technology officer, says Amazon paid an undisclosed amount for the company. The article, …
Read More »Reflecting Acquiring-Industry Changes, the ETA Rebrands Its Annual Conference as ‘Transact’
For more than 20 years the Electronic Transactions Association’s conference has been known as the “ETA Annual Meeting & Expo.” But next spring the merchant-acquiring industry’s biggest gathering will be known as “Transact 14: Powered by ETA.” The rebranding around the “Transact” name, according to ETA chief executive Jason Oxman, …
Read More »Mercury Payment Takes A Step Toward Going Public
Mercury Payment Systems LLC may be considering a move to take the independent sales organization public. On Friday, Durango, Colo.-based Mercury issued a release disclosing it had filed a confidential draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that may presage the payment company’s public stock offering. Such …
Read More »Court’s Greenlight for Settlement Hardly Signals Battle’s End As Merchants Gird for Appeals
Retailers, and the trade associations representing them, that are opposed to a $5.7 billion settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange rates are contesting federal judge John Gleeson’s affirmation Friday of the settlement amount. Defendants in the 8-year-old litigation, which was heard in the District Court of …
Read More »Federal Court Issues OK for Multibillion-Dollar Credit Card Interchange Settlement
Capping years of complex litigation, a federal court on Friday approved a controversial multibillion-dollar settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange rates. With his imprimatur, Judge John Gleeson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has brought apparent—but only apparent—finality to a …
Read More »Apple, Shopkick Among First to Deploy Bluetooth LE for Commerce; PayPal’s Closing in
A wireless connectivity standard known as Bluetooth Low Energy appears to be getting a high-energy reception in payments and commerce. Apple Inc. is among the first to put the technology to use in its stores. On-the-spot rewards company Shopkick is testing it in two Macy’s stores, one in New York …
Read More »Debit Networks Form Organization to Work on EMV As Court Mulls Durbin Decision
Ten U.S. debit networks have formed the Debit Network Alliance LLC, an organization meant to ensure they have a competitive stake in the debit industry following the U.S. payment-industry migration to the EMV chip card standard, expected within a couple of years. The new group has sprung up as …
Read More »Retailer-Backed MCX Signs up ‘Heart’ of Commerce, Locks in Merchant Acceptance
While questions remain concerning when it will launch and how it will work, the Merchant Customer Exchange mobile-payments venture continues to sign up retail companies large and small. And in a twist unique to MCX, with each merchant it signs for acceptance it apparently fences off that merchant from competing …
Read More »Digital Transactions News Puts Apple’s iBeacon to the Test, And Finds It Works As Advertised
With 58% of U.S. consumers owning a smart phone, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, it’s no wonder that retailers want some time and space on the small-screen mobile devices. Apple Inc., which according to the Pew report, has 25% of the smart- phone …
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