Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
They’ve met in court before, and it looks like they’re going to meet again: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the No. 1 retailer, against Visa Inc., the No. 1 payment card network. As usual, the subject is interchange and payment card acceptance rules. Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is suing Visa for alleged violations …
Read More »Target Clarifies Number of Consumers Affected by Breach, Claims Data Security Improving
Target Corp. told a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that the overlap in the number of consumers affected by the two-headed monster of its data breach may be 12 million or more. The nation’s No. 2 general retailer also said it is improving its data security in the wake of the …
Read More »Burger King Has Its Way With a New Mobile-Payments and Loyalty App
It may perennially trail McDonald’s Corp. among the leading U.S. hamburger chains, but Burger King Worldwide Inc. is on track to take the lead in mobile payments. Miami-based Burger King this week said it plans to roll out a smart phone app offering mobile payments and digital-coupons beginning in April. …
Read More »Report Documents the March of Online Alternatives to the Payments Mainstream
Alternative payments? So many people are now using services such as PayPal, Amazon Payments, Google Wallet and others that the term is becoming outmoded. In a new report, Javelin Strategy & Research says eight in 10 online shoppers have used an online alternative payment service in the past year, and …
Read More »With Calls for Change Mounting, Visa And MasterCard Launch Industry Security Group
In the wake of high-profile retailer data breaches and mounting political pressure to address security flaws in the nation’s payment card system, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. on Friday said they were forming a “cross-industry group” to enhance payment security. The leading card networks said in a joint news release …
Read More »Now Hawking iPads for POS, NCR Silver Mulls a Purpose-Built Tablet with its Own Stamp
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 …
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