September, 2017

• 1 September

  What’s New at the OCC

  

  In 2015, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) expanded its involvement with financial-services innovation, making innovation a key area of focus. In a recent interview, Beth Knickerbocker, the OCC’s inaugural chief innovation officer, said, “The OCC is saying that it’s okay to innovate responsibly.” And although she …
• 1 September

  Bitcoin 1, Bitcoin 2 … Bitcoin 3?

  

  In late July, the currency known as Bitcoin split into two competing, incompatible currencies. The rebels who initiated the so-called fork may or may not survive the onslaught of shocked traders, many of whom rely on this currency for ransomware and other illicit payments. Still, even if Bitcoin-2 proves to …
• 1 September

  The Fraud Scourge Lessens for Debit Card Issuers

  

  Debit card fraud rates fell last year, according to a widely watched annual study of the U.S. debit market. The study also provides new insights about debit cards and mobile wallets, and debit’s increasing popularity for small purchases. The fraud-loss rate for non-PIN (mostly signature-debit) transactions fell 30% from 2.6 …

July, 2017

• 1 July

  Gift Cards Recover Their Momentum

  Gift cards issued by retailers are heating up, according to the latest research from Mercator Advisory Group. Total loads grew 6% in 2016 to reach $133.9 billion, according to Mercator’s Ben Jackson. That performance follows a decline in loads the year before. The research, which covers closed-loop gift cards as …
• 1 July

  Acquiring-Industry Acquisitions Focus on the ISV Niche

  Two notable merchant-acquiring industry acquisitions in the late spring involved such prominent names as First Data Corp. and Sage Payment Solutions. Both focused on the growing integrated software vendor (ISV) niche. Leading processor First Data months earlier indicated it wanted to become a player in payment services for software firms …
• 1 July

  Finally, A P2P Payments Service for Apple Pay

  Payments observers have expected Apple Inc. to add person-to-person payments to its Apple Pay mobile-payments service for almost as long as the mobile wallet has been available, and last month, the computing giant obliged. Without adding much detail, Apple announced that users of its Messages feature will be able to …

June, 2017

• 1 June

  Beyond Payments With Bob Carr

  

  For former Heartland Payment Systems Inc. chief executive Bob Carr, the next venture goes beyond simply making money. Carr led the $4.3 billion sale of his old company to Global Payments Inc. in April 2016. But rather than ride off into a comfortable retirement, Carr is back with his latest …
• 1 June

  It’s Bust-Out Time for Alipay in North America

  

  For the China-based Alipay payments service, pursuing niche merchant markets in North America no longer is good enough. “When we’re looking at partners, we’re looking for ubiquity,” says Souheil Badran, president of Alipay North America. Those partners so far include First Data Corp., which in May opened its huge U.S. …
• 1 June

  Behind the Fraudsters’ Epidemic of Card Testing

  

  When you’ve got something hot like stolen credit card numbers, you have only a brief opportunity to cash in before they go cold. Manually sifting through hundreds, even thousands, of card accounts bought in bulk can take more time than criminals have, which is why they increasingly are relying on …

May, 2017

• 1 May

  The IoT Challenge: Securing Devices Without Impeding Usage

  

  With a forecast of 15 billion new devices as part of the Internet of Things potentially coming online as payments devices by 2021, securing these devices, whether they are cars, wearables, or appliances, is emerging as a top concern. “We are seeing a huge increase in inadequately protected devices,” Graeme …