Major tech and payments companies are reportedly showing an interest in acquiring Softcard, the troubled mobile-payments joint venture owned by three of the nation’s biggest mobile operators. Google Inc. is in “exclusive” talks with the company and has offered at least $50 million for it, The Wall Street Journal reported …

Some cybercrooks are nothing if not accommodating. A new version of the so-called ransomware called CyberWall, for example, has made it easier for victims to make payments and get their data back. CyberWall 3.0, released early this week, includes new gateways for reaching the decryption site. The ransom note file …

No one can say for sure why the price of Bitcoin has dived sharply since the turn of the year, but that doesn’t mean market observers don’t have theories. These range from rampant short selling to the hack last week at Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp, in which crooks siphoned out $5.2 …

In the wake of a barrage of data thefts affecting tens of millions of U.S. citizens, President Barack Obama on Monday proposed national legislation to regulate breach notification. Other legislation proposed by Obama would ban companies from selling student data to other organizations for non-educational uses and from using information …

News of a possible card-data breach at chicken-sandwich chain Chick-fil-A caps a year that saw a number of franchised businesses compromised and throws into relief what some experts say is the unique security vulnerability of the franchise business model. Franchised chains, in which so-called owner-operators run stores under a license …

Merchant processor Merchant Warehouse announced Monday it has changed its name to Cayan LLC. The 17-year-old Boston-based company’s rebrand takes effect immediately and is reflected on a redesigned Web site that includes a new tag line, “The Payment Possibilities Company.” It will also be promoted at next week’s National Retail …

Two days before Christmas, Google Inc. quietly filed a federal lawsuit against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., alleging the card networks violated antitrust law by setting “supracompetitive” interchange rates from 2004 to 2012. The unusually sparse, three-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, asks …

Just going by the headlines, you’d think mobile is the prime mover in the payments business. But desktop PCs still dominate online sales, and for the holiday-shopping season they’ve been ringing like cash registers. Since the official start of the season on Nov. 1, consumers using PCs have registered $48.3 …

Since 2012, investors have poured $407 million into Bitcoin startups, with three-quarters of that sum flowing into the cryptocurrency just this year, according to figures compiled by CoinDesk, a Bitcoin newsletter. But now at least one expert is expressing doubts that these investors will see much of a return—if any—on …

Remember host card emulation? You might have lost sight of this variant of mobile payments based on near-field communication amid the flood of publicity Apple Inc.’s SIM-based Apple Pay service generated this fall. But HCE never went away, and now Royal Bank of Canada is making a bid to put …