Fraud & Security

Merchant acquirer EVO Payments Inc. processed 821.6 million transactions in 2018’s fourth quarter, up 16% from 705.5 million a year earlier. European transactions grew 22% to 575.1 million while North American transactions rose 5% to 246.5 million. Fourth-quarter revenues increased 9% year-over-year to $150.8 million; the company posted a net …

Mastercard Inc. said it is purchasing Ethoca Inc., a fraud-mitigation firm, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter. Ethoca works with more than 5,000 merchants and 4,000 financial institutions. Mastercard intends to expand Ethoca’s capabilities and combine the company with its current security …

A bank’s ability to deliver convenience and security is a high-stakes balancing act. Consumers value secure applications, but they don’t want the hassle that often accompanies multiple points of authentication. They want easy-to-use applications that facilitate fast and seamless financial transactions.  There has been no shortage of data breaches over …

Fewer consumers fell victim to payment card fraud in 2018, but fraud victims picked up more of the financial losses, according to Javelin Strategy & Research’s latest annual identity-fraud study. Based on the results of its 16th annual identity-fraud study, Javelin estimates that payment-related fraud affected 14.4 million consumers last …

Criminals figured out in 2018 how to really frustrate retailers. They automated their bots to create high-volume attacks against online merchants, finds the ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report: H2 2018. Released Tuesday by ThreatMetrix, an anti-fraud company purchased by LexisNexis Risk Solutions last year, the report finds there were 5.5 billion bot …

Fleetcor Technologies Inc., a business-to-business payments provider, said it has agreed to acquire Nvoicepay Inc., a provider of accounts-payable technology. Terms were not disclosed. Private-equity firm Napier Park Financial Partners invested $10 million in Nvoicepay in 2016. Mobile point-of-sale specialist CardFlight Inc. said its SwipeSimple product now includes the ability …

Payments company i3 Verticals Inc. announced the acquisition of two unnamed companies at a combined price of approximately $20 million. One is in the public sector and the other is in wireless Internet-service billing. Countering the impression that most users of digital-payments services skew younger, half of first-time person-to-person payment …

With its pending $750 million acquisition of The Western Union Co.’s bill-pay subsidiary Speedpay Inc., payment-software and processing provider ACI Worldwide Inc. will gain control of a profitable operation that made a name for itself in expedited payments. “Speedpay invented the expedited-payments market,” says Richard K. Crone, chief executive of …

NetCents Technology Inc. said it signed a 5-year reseller agreement with an undisclosed independent sales organization. The ISO will bundle NetCents’ gateway and cryptocurrency acceptance into its offerings. The Electronic Transactions Association and Worldpay are bringing 10 startup companies to the ETA’s annual Transact conference. The 10 companies, part of …

Retailers, like many other businesses, have probably had their fill of fraud attempts. Unfortunately, criminals have not. Between May 1 and Dec. 31, 2018, Akamai Technologies detected more than 10 billion credential-stuffing attacks aimed at retailers, accounting for more than a third of all such attempts—28 billion—in that period. In …