Debit Cards

How will 2019 be remembered for data breaches? Not well. The number of U.S. data breaches tracked by the Identity Theft Resource Center increased to 1,473, a 17% increase from 1,257 in 2018. Drilling into the payments sector, the increase was larger, according to a newly released report from the …

The U.S. House of Representatives’ Task Force on Financial Technology held a hearing Thursday morning titled “Is Cash Still King? Reviewing the Rise of Mobile Payments.” Witnesses included representatives from PayPal, the U.S. Faster Payments Council, the Brookings Institute, Consumer Reports, and a New York City non-profit dedicated to financial …

Mastercard Inc. on Wednesday reported double-digit growth in fourth-quarter purchase volume and transactions, but reduced economic activity from the Coronavirus that originated in China could put a crimp on growth early this year. “We’ll take this as it comes, one step at a time,” Mastercard chief executive Ajay Banga said …

EBay Inc. plans to expand its managed-payments program dramatically starting in the second half of next year, officials said Tuesday. Introduced last year, the program depends on a gateway from Adyen NV and now operates in the United States and Germany. “We will go hard at not only the markets that we’re in …

PCI Pal, a payments provider for contact centers and other card-not-present businesses, launched PCI Pal Digital to secure transactions on digital channels such as Webchat, social media, email, and SMS.VPay, a digital claims-payment platform, reported a 30% rise in revenue from 2018 to 2019, fueled by a three-year, 180% customer …

The criminals behind ransomware attacks are becoming dramatically bolder. The average payment demanded in fourth-quarter attacks reached $84,116, more than double the average sum in the third quarter, according to the latest data from Coveware Inc., a Westport, Conn.-based cybersecurity firm that tracks data from cases it has handled. Worse …

Visa Inc. is among backers of an $80-million investment in Currency Cloud Ltd., whose software runs cross-border payments for financial apps, primarily in Europe. The funding round, co-led by Visa and SAP’s venture-funding unit Sapphire, included backing from Google. The funding follows Visa’s $5.3-billion deal to acquire Plaid, whose software enables fintechs …

Two bellwether payments stocks headed in opposite directions Friday morning as they reported financial results for the fourth quarter. Discover Financial Services saw its share price swoon 7.41% in pre-market trading. By mid-morning, it stood at $77.94, down 9% from its Thursday close. AmEx shares on the other hand had …

New York City became the third U.S. city to ban cashless-only payments in restaurants and stores with the passage Thursday of a measure to prohibit merchants from refusing to accept cash. San Francisco and Philadelphia have similar bans, as does the state of New Jersey.  Originally proposed by New York …

WEX Inc., a processor in the fleet-fueling and corporate transaction market, said it has agreed to acquire eNett, a business-to-business payments software company specializing in the travel market, and Optal, a specialist provider of B2B transactions, for approximately $1.275 billion in cash and approximately 2 million shares of WEX common …