Credit Cards

The latest data-breach battleground has shifted to merchant-acquiring and prepaid card territory. Atlanta-based RBS WorldPay, a big acquirer owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group that also provides prepaid card programs, late Tuesday afternoon reported a breach of its computer system that may have compromised personal information on about …

It started not even a week ago, but a pilot program in which Boston-area commuters can pay for parking by mobile phone appears to be a hit with riders, according to early anecdotal feedback. “The buzz has been huge with customers, we've only been deployed for four days,” Ian Larrabee, …

As both a card issuer and payment card network, Discover Financial Services is feeling the sharp pinch of recession. Discover chief executive David Nelms indicated to analysts on Thursday that Discover would play a conservative game on the issuing side in 2009, but not necessarily so on the merchant side. …

Largely confirming what it projected in late November, point-of-sale terminal provider VeriFone Holdings Inc. says North American business from independent sales organizations and merchant processors was off in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Oct. 31, and prospects for fiscal 2009 aren't much better. San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone eked out a …

While online merchants managed to keep a lid on fraud losses in 2008, a faltering economy could make 2009 a costlier year, a leading expert says. “It'll be interesting to see if merchants can hold fraud rates steady” next year, says Doug Schwegman, director of market and customer intelligence at …

While experts once thought contactless payments via a technology called near-field communication (NFC) would drive mobile payments, the sluggish development of NFC now means handset-based payments will grow without the technology, according to a research report released on Tuesday. Indeed, payments by text messages, through the mobile Web, and on …

Merchants are getting the message that they should not store credit and debit card data, but that's turning into yesterday's issue, according to Chicago-based Trustwave, one of the big card-industry security consultancies. In a report released on Monday, Trustwave says that computer hackers may still be able to steal card …

The steady march toward more secure payment-processing software is likely to force many?possibly thousands?of small software vendors out of the market of serving merchants and card processors. These vendors will find it too expensive to upgrade their existing point-of-sale and related applications to meet specifications set forth in the new …

Signs are pointing to fewer merchant-account bookings by independent sales organizations, and that's translating into fewer orders for VeriFone Holdings Inc., the largest U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal developer. Last week, VeriFone reduced its revenue projections for its fourth quarter ended Oct. 31 and fiscal 2008. In a conference call late last …

The PCI Security Standards Council on Monday introduced a quality-assurance program for the companies that determine whether a merchant, processor, or other entity that touches credit and debit card data meets the council's rules. The Wakefield, Mass.-based council's aim is to ensure more uniform enforcement of the Payment Card Industry …