A mobile-banking feature that allows ATM users to stage withdrawals in advance received a patent Tuesday from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The technology, conceived and implemented by Paydiant Inc., a Wellesley, Mass.-based startup, has already been integrated into software at ATM maker Diebold Inc. and at Fidelity National …

The board of directors of eBay Inc. is “unified” in opposing a proposal from famed activist investor Carl Icahn that the company spin off its PayPal Inc. unit, eBay chief executive John Donahoe told analysts Wednesday afternoon. Calling the proposed separation a “distraction” coming just as eBay is trying to …

The number of credit and debit cards compromised in 2013’s data breaches was on track by mid-December to be more than double the number of cards compromised in 2012, but then along came Target Corp.’s massive breach that exposed 40 million more. Thus, the Identity Theft Resource Center now estimates …

  A 17-year-old Russian boy is behind the malware that has wreaked havoc at Target Corp., says IntelCrawler LLC, a Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based data-security company. In a release posted on its Web site Friday, IntelCrawler disclosed that it tracked down the alleged hacker via its own sources, including chat transcripts …

Target Corp. on Friday said personal data on 70 million customers were compromised in a separate theft during the same data breach it disclosed last month that exposed up to 40 million credit and debit card accounts of U.S. shoppers. That could bring the total number of customers affected up …

The Bitcoin virtual currency continued its march toward the payments mainstream with the recent announcement by online game developer Zynga Inc. that it would test Bitcoin acceptance with some of its popular games. n “In response to Bitcoin’s rise in popularity around the world, Zynga, with help from BitPay, is …

  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 …

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, …

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 …

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, …