Fraud & Security

United Merchant Services Inc. said it acquired the rights to Royal Western Computer’s assets, including its point-of-sale software for dry cleaning merchants, branding, trademarks, licensee database, and sales channels. Royal Western Computer holds more than 25% of the dry cleaning POS market, UMS said. The company intends to expand by combining …

Cyber criminals took no time off in the first six months of 2019 as human-initiated attacks against online sites grew by 13% from the same period a year ago, finds the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Cybercrime Report released Tuesday. Bots, too, evolved to target new account creations. Bot attacks targeting new …

Five years ago, Apple Inc. laid claim to offering one of the first smart phone-based mobile-payment services, and now some observers say Apple Pay, with an estimated 43% of iPhone owners using the service, may be poised to score a breakthrough. Apple Pay was announced with great fanfare Sept. 9, …

Cyber threat intelligence provider Check Point Research disclosed this week what it says is a flaw in some Android smart phones that enables hackers to send bogus messages that trick users into entering malicious settings that could, among other things, route traffic through a proxy server controlled by the hacker. …

Digital River Inc. said it made an e-commerce plugin for WordPress users available. Among its features, the plugin enables payment processing, PCI compliance, and fraud screening.Puerto Rico-based payment processor Evertec Inc. said it will donate $100,000 for disaster relief in the Bahamas, which have been racked by Hurricane Dorian.Compulocks Brands Inc. released a …

U.S. merchants added 600,000 locations for EMV chip card acceptance in 2019’s first six months, and Visa issuers cranked out an additional 10 million EMV payment cards, according to new figures from Visa Inc. In its latest update on the U.S. conversion from magnetic-stripe payment cards to the EMV chip …

Travel-payments and services specialist CellPoint Mobile changed its name to CellPoint Digital and created two omnichannel units. Velocity is the payment platform and Voyage manages promotions, sales, payments, and customer self-service across all digital channels.ICBA Bancard, a unit of the Independent Community Bankers of America, launched the ICBA Bancard Digital Payments Strategy …

Shoppers around the world value privacy and security most when buying online, and are most likely to abandon a shopping cart simply because they’ve changed their mind about buying the product—not so much because of factors like long delivery times or non-acceptance of preferred payment methods. These are among the …

The card networks’ crackdown on negative-option billing and subscriptions with free trials is continuing, with stricter policies from Visa Inc. set to take effect April 18. The updated Visa rules will follow by a year tightened rules from Mastercard Inc. on negative-option billers. These are billers who, after getting a consumer …

The imminent arrival of the NFL season, coupled with a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that leaves legalized sports betting up to the states, could sack payments firms’ efforts to control fraud, observers warn. The professional football season kicks off Sept. 5 and is widely expected to draw strong …