Credit Cards

Everyone knows data breaches are expensive and affect a lot of people, but just how much is startling. In a new analysis, Javelin Strategy & Research estimates credit and debit card issuers spent $252.7 million in 2009 replacing more than 70 million cards compromised by data breaches. Analyst Robert Vamosi …

Business is turning around for VeriFone Systems Inc., the leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, as the economy shows signs of recovery and services rather than traditional hardware for processing payment card transactions account for an ever-greater share of VeriFone’s sales. San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone late Wednesday reported net income of …

Payvment Inc., a San Francisco startup whose shopping-cart software has been enabling transactions for storefronts on Facebook for the past six months, plans to use $1.5 million in new funding to add engineers and expand its network beyond the massive social network. Christian Taylor, the company’s chief executive, tells Digital …

Continuing its massive clean-up in the wake of the payment card industry’s biggest data breach, merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. late on Wednesday announced a $41.4 million settlement with MasterCard Inc. The settlement will reimburse MasterCard debit and credit card issuers for their costs stemming from the breach Heartland …

End-to-end encryption of payment card data is all the rage among vendors to the merchant-acquiring industry, but vendors themselves believe it will take a long time for merchants to begin using their new technology. Asked how long they believe it will take for the majority of U.S. card-accepting merchants to …

Reflecting recent trends noted by the payment card networks, merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. reported on Thursday that it is beginning to see a turnaround in charge volume at merchants battered for the past two years by the retrenchment in consumer spending. Heartland also disclosed that it has expensed …

The battle over interchange regulation continues to heat up, with the introduction this week of amendments to financial regulatory reform legislation pending in the U.S. Senate that would target the controversial fees charged to merchants. The three amendments, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and co-sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy, …

Despite what MasterCard Inc. executives labeled a “strong quarter” of earnings, U.S. credit card purchase volumes continued to fall in the three months ending March 31. In addition, MasterCard’s debit card count dropped by 1.6% even though debit transaction volumes grew.But signs of both an “underlying momentum of our business …

While Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are shelling out big bucks for the loyalties of card issuers and merchants (Digital Transactions News, April 29), they’re also adding technological muscle to attract more transaction volume to their networks. In the latest example, MasterCard on Monday announced a host of upgrades to …

As smaller merchants struggle with data-security requirements set by the bank card networks, some security firms are working on ways to simplify compliance. An example is Panoptic Security Inc., a Salt Lake City, Utah-based company that distributes its software through independent sales organizations and acquiring banks. It has started talking …