Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Target Corp. is denying a widely circulated report that the information stolen by cyber criminals in a massive breach of credit and debit card data included customer’s debit card PINs Citing a “senior payments executive familiar with the situation,” Reuters reported early Christmas Day that the data thieves have the …
Read More »Phishers and Scammers Follow in the Wake of the Target Breach
Target Corp. issued another update on the breach of its point-of-sale systems saying that phishers are using the incident to trick consumers into revealing sensitive information. The basic modus operandi of phishers is to send mass emails in the name of a financial institution or other company to consumers, asking them …
Read More »Target Says Little Fraud And No Apparent PIN Theft Resulting From Data Breach So Far
In the wake of the huge payment card data breach it confirmed Thursday, big-box retailer Target Corp. today said that so far it has received few reports of fraud resulting from the breach. The retailer also said that while hackers obtained considerable customer data on approximately 40 million credit and …
Read More »Debit Networks Form Organization to Work on EMV As Court Mulls Durbin Decision
Ten U.S. debit networks have formed the Debit Network Alliance LLC, an organization meant to ensure they have a competitive stake in the debit industry following the U.S. payment-industry migration to the EMV chip card standard, expected within a couple of years. The new group has sprung up as …
Read More »Digital Gift Cards Come Into Their Own As Holiday Promotions Spur Sales, ‘Self-Giving’
Only a few years old, digital gift cards are soaring in popularity as U.S. consumers head into the heart of the holiday shopping season. Total loads on the products will reach $1.3 billion for November and December, a nearly four-fold increase from the same two-month stretch last year, according to …
Read More »Coin Gets Lots of Buzz, But May Get Devalued When the Euphoria Wears off, Experts Say
The Coin card, which officially launched last Thursday but is not yet available in the market, is generating a tidal wave of buzz in the press and on social-media sites but is not wowing payments experts contacted by Digital Transactions News. “It’s solving a problem that doesn’t really exist,” says …
Read More »Visa, MasterCard Post Big Volume Gains As They Fight for Credit, Debit Card Spend
U.S. bank card purchase volumes rose in the 10% range in the quarter ending Sept. 30, with MasterCard Inc. growing faster than Visa Inc. in debit and Visa gaining faster than MasterCard in credit. MasterCard on Thursday reported total U.S. credit, charge, and debit card purchase volume of $267 billion, …
Read More »Network Divide Over EMV Comes to the Fore as Rumors About a Liability-Shift Delay Surface
By Jim Daly The deep divide within debit networks about bringing Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to the United States was on full display Monday at a conference in which a Visa Inc. executive hinted that Visa might be open to a delay in a major EMV deadline. But an executive …
Read More »Square Gets Into the Person-to-Person Payments Arena With its New Square Cash
By Jim Daly In a move that apparently signals its intention to become a more diversified financial-services provider, Square Inc. on Tuesday introduced a person-to-person payments service called Square Cash. The service, which works through email or mobile apps, has no fees for either the sender or recipient and only …
Read More »Dueling Studies Reach Opposite Conclusions About Consumers’ Durbin Savings
Durbin Amendment critics have long accused merchants of pocketing the billions they’ve saved since the amendment’s highly controversial debit card interchange price controls took effect two years ago Tuesday. Now, however, retailers are rolling out a study estimating that merchants passed on $5.86 billion in Durbin-related savings to consumers last …
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