Credit Cards

Data Insecurity Part 5 While absolute dollars of fraud are rising with volume, the payments industry has done a commendable job in managing risk. For every $100 in purchases with signature-based credit cards, only about a nickel winds up as fraud?about one-third what it was 15 years ago?and that rate …

Data Insecurity Part 4 Securing transactions at the point of sale seems like child's play compared to the Internet, and since the payments volume is 20 to 25 times the size of online transacting, a natural venue for improved data security. But the rash of data breaches (covered in Part …

Merchants often grumble about the costs and hassles of accepting payment cards, but rarely do they go on strike in protest. But that's what some New York City taxicab drivers started doing on Wednesday, though their gripes involve more than just cards. According to late-morning wire-service accounts, an unknown number …

Data Insecurity Part 3 For as long as we've had threats to transacting online, there's been a data-security industry poised with a vast array of solutions to protect us, anxiously awaiting evidence of a compelling business case to get things started. But for just as long, it's been axiomatic that …

Acquirers will be penalized one interchange tier for large merchants that qualify for volume-based tiered rates and fail to show compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) by Sept. 30, Visa USA says. In a document it released earlier this month to its members, Visa clarified an interchange …

Consumers' willingness to pay credit card bills online is rising rapidly, with 524 million transactions in 2006, a 27% jump over 414 million payments in 2005, according to survey data from comScore Inc. The most recent online payment volume, which represents payments consumers make at card issuers' Web sites, is …

Data Insecurity (Editor's Note: This is the first of a 10-part series by noted electronic-payments-industry analyst Steve Mott on the current crisis in transaction security?its causes, its costs, and its possible solutions?ranging from the point of sale to the Internet to mobile commerce. After eight weekly articles, the series moves …

With its official unveiling on Friday of an early version of an online payments system, e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. has launched itself into head-on competition with established players like PayPal Inc. and well-funded upstarts like Google Checkout. The service, called Amazon Flexible Payments, is in a so-called beta stage with …

Signaling further progress among merchants toward compliance with a key data-protection mandate, Visa USA announced this week that 40% of the largest merchants accepting its cards now comply with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI). Further, some 96% of these merchants have certified they are not storing account data, …

Spotting an opportunity in combining online authentication with contactless technology, a 6-month-old Knoxville, Tenn.-based company plans to have a product on the market by early next year that consumers could use to make payments both on e-commerce sites and at the point of sale. Elemental Knowledge LLC is starting with …