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NCR Corp.’s announcement this week that it has updated its iPad-based point-of-sale system, which it sells as NCR Silver, to support loyalty programs shone a spotlight on one of the few tablet POS products that comes from a major corporation in a market that has attracted a raft of startups. …
Read More »Two More Data Breaches, But Little Concern by Small Businesses for Card Security
Given the massive news coverage about payment card security since December in the wake of Target Corp.’s huge data breach and other ones at Neiman Marcus Group and Michaels, you might think that data protection is top of mind among small-business owners. Not so, according to results of a new …
Read More »Neiman Marcus Downsizes by Two-Thirds Its Tally of Cards Compromised in Breach
In a rare piece of good, or least not as bad, news about the recent retailer payment card data breaches, upscale department-store chain Neiman Marcus Group says about 350,000 cards were compromised by the breach it disclosed in January, down from its earlier estimate of 1.1 million. The number of …
Read More »Loop Mobile Wallet Debuts With Expectation of Near Ubiquitous Acceptance
Loop, a mobile wallet that uses a case or fob to generate its own contactless field to communicate with many payment terminals, has launched for the latest iPhone models. The brainchild of payments veterans George Wallner, founder of point-of-sale terminal maker Hypercom Corp., now Equinox Payments LLC, and Will …
Read More »MasterCard, Visa Release Specs To Enable NFC Payments That Bypass the Secure Element
A form of near-field communication that does not require a secure element to complete a mobile payment now has the formal backing of card brands MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. Each of them announced today their respective contactless payment schemes support so-called host card emulation. Host card emulation got a …
Read More »The Feds Give a Cautious OK to Financial Services for Legal Marijuana Sellers
The gradual lowering of barriers that have kept legal marijuana merchants outside of the financial mainstream gained momentum Friday in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) and the U.S. Department of Justice announced new guidelines that signal federal approval for banks to serve legal marijuana …
Read More »As Key Chip Deadline Looms, Doubts Emerge About Small Merchants’ Readiness
With Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. digging in their heels on a key chip card deadline, payments executives are expressing doubts that all U.S. small businesses will be ready. “The short answer is no,” says Henry Helgeson, chief executive of Merchant Warehouse, a Boston-based merchant processor. “We still have a …
Read More »Contactless Payment Scheme Enables Consumers to Fill Up on Fuel and Loyalty Points
A new contactless payment scheme available from On Track Innovations Ltd. enables consumers to pay for fuel at the pump without removing their payment card from their wallets. n Currently, EasyFuel Plus is available in Europe and other international locations. OTI says plans to market it in the United States …
Read More »Small-Merchant PCI Compliance Is on the Rise, Acquirer Survey Shows
Close to 60% of ISOs and other processors are reporting compliance rates of 40% or better among their portfolios of so-called Level 4 merchants, up about five percentage points from a year ago, according to a survey released by Atlanta-based security-solutions vendor ControlScan Inc. and the Merchant Acquirers’ Committee, a …
Read More »Target Passed a PCI Inspection Before Breach; Will Spend $100 Million on Chip Card Effort
Target Corp. said on Tuesday that it passed its latest Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) inspection a mere three months before confirming in December that a data breach compromised 40 million customers’ payment card numbers. Target also said it is fast-tracking its efforts to roll out chip card acceptance …
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