Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Retailers and analysts have been giving forecasts ranging from ho-hum to downright pessimistic for the upcoming holiday spending period, but the outlook for online retailers almost certainly is better. Growth rates in electronic-commerce remain near 20%, the U.S. Commerce Dept.'s Census Bureau reported on Monday. The Census Bureau's quarterly report …
Read More »Consumers And Wall Street Yawn at the Biggest Breach Yet
Off-price retailer TJX Cos. Inc. might hold the dubious honor of being the merchant where the nation's worst breach of payment card data occurred, but you'd never know it by looking at the company's latest financials. Revenue and profits are up, and executives made only passing reference to the breach …
Read More »Its Overhaul Complete, Visa Shoots for the Moon with Its Pending IPO
Visa Inc. late Friday said it aims to raise $10 billion in its upcoming initial public offering of stock. The figure, while preliminary, is four times the $2.4 billion MasterCard Inc. grossed in its May 2006 IPO, the first chance the market had to value a bank card network. A …
Read More »PCI Council: Software Security Guidelines To Be a Standard
In a move long expected by software developers, merchant processors, and others, the PCI Security Standards Council this week said it is adding a new standard for point-of-sale software based on Visa Inc.'s set of best practices for card-processing applications. The action is aimed at strengthening the software component of …
Read More »A Bill Offers Relief to Merchants Besieged by Suits over Receipts
Few people would deny that a law Congress enacted in 2003 mandating payment card receipt truncation had a noble aim?to prevent criminals from getting enough data when they obtained other people's transaction receipts to steal identities or commit card fraud. But some merchants, while complying with the truncation provision that …
Read More »Before IPO, Visa Reaches a $2.25 Billion AmEx Antitrust Settlement
In an attempt to clear away legal issues before its planned initial public stock offering next year, Visa Inc. today said it would pay rival American Express Co. more than $2 billion to settle an antitrust lawsuit AmEx brought seeking compensation for lost business during the years a Visa rule …
Read More »Merchants’ PCI Travails Prompt Security Program from Big Blue
With compliance deadlines already passed for some merchants and looming for others, the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) has drawn a bevy of vendors into the market to help merchants cope with one or more of its dozen requirements. Now the biggest vendor yet is jumping in. IBM Corp. …
Read More »Amid Data Thefts, Visa’s Software Rules Align More Closely with PCI
With five new mandates for merchant acquirers and processors to meet by 2010, Visa Inc.'s Payment Application Best Practices, a set of standards governing payment-processing software, are becoming ever more tightly aligned with the comprehensive Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) promulgated by the major card networks. But mandates may …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: MasterCard, Heartland, Online Resources
The flow of third-quarter earnings reports from payments companies continued this week with MasterCard Inc. reporting a hefty increase in transaction volume, revenues, and profits, while fast-growing merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. weighed in with a 20% increase in processing volume. And the chief executive of bill-payment processor Online …
Read More »Upon Further Review, Accounts Exposed in TJX Breach Double
Sources reached by Digital Transactions News aren't surprised at the news that the number of credit and debit card accounts affected in the TJX Cos. breach has doubled, as disclosed by court filings and reported this week by The Boston Globe. Although the off-price retailing chain reported in March that …
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