Credit Cards

It often seems impossible to thwart online fraudsters, but e-commerce merchants made headway in the past year, according to CyberSource Corp.'s 11th annual study of e-commerce fraud. For the first time in four years, U.S. and Canadian merchants reported a decline in the average percentage of online revenues lost to …

Bringing small merchants into compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, is no easy task, according to independent sales organization executives that have started PCI programs for so-called Level 4 merchants. “You call up Billy's Pizza and ask him about his firewall, and he's not going to …

Visa Inc. is paying more attention to a broad category of merchants it dubs Internet direct marketers, according to a Visa security executive who spoke on Thursday to independent sales organization executives. These marketers bear many similarities to the often-suspect sellers of the 1980s and '90s who peddled their wares …

The bare-knuckled fight between leading U.S. point-of-sale terminal manufacturer VeriFone Holdings Inc. and the big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. keeps on escalating, with four lawsuits in three courts now pending. Both companies continue to crank out press releases, letters from their chief executives, and other public-relations missives that …

With credit card growth sputtering, an expanding debit card market will help lift transaction processors' volumes for the foreseeable future, according to new research from Goldman Sachs & Co. The investment bank also predicts processors will find robust growth markets in nascent channels like mobile payments and established debit-related markets …

U.S. payment card issuers missed out on nearly $4 billion in charge volume in 2008, including $78.7 million in interchange, because of problems cardholders had with their cards while traveling abroad, according to a new report by Aite Group LLC. The default response when travelers have a card problem is …

The first Visa-branded debit cards in Canada will be out in 2010's first quarter, Visa Inc. chairman and chief executive Joseph W. Saunders reported late Tuesday. Saunders, reviewing Visa's financial report for fiscal 2009's fourth quarter, also told analysts that signs of recovery from recession are starting to appear in …

Utility companies looking to convert from paper-based billing to electronic payments are continuing to become payment card acceptors, according to the MasterCard Inc. executive who oversees the network's programs for that merchant sector. “We're very pleased with the movement towards card acceptance across utilities of all sizes,” Steve Carnevale, vice …

The August indictments of three individuals allegedly responsible for the theft of 130 million credit and debit card numbers in the Heartland Payment Systems Inc. data breach made headlines across the world. Yet little attention is paid to the laborious investigative work needed to track down the criminals behind these …

There's some evolution going on at Revolution Money Inc., the low-cost PIN-based credit card and electronic-payments venture. In announcing on Tuesday that Fifth Third Bancorp would be a RevolutionCard issuer, Revolution Money revealed a new focus on building its cardholder base and disclosed another $20 million venture-capital investment on top …