Fraud & Security

The panelists were not subtle in assessing the future of digital currencies and the decentralized blockchain technology behind them. “Cryptocurrencies and blockchain will take over the world, it will be a bigger impact on the world than the Internet,” said investment banker Dennis O’Neill, chief executive of Chicago-based O’Neill Capital …

Approximately 400,000 U.S. merchant locations began accepting EMV chip cards in 2018’s first six months, according to new data from Visa Inc. In its latest report on the U.S. conversion from magnetic-stripe payment cards to the EMV standard, Visa on Wednesday said 3.1 million merchant locations accepted the new cards …

ControlScan said its SecureEdge platform now offers PCI Data Security Essentials, a service that enables payments providers to offer a more user-friendly alternative to the traditional PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire to small businesses. Square Inc. released two ways to accept card payments, one via a computer and another using the Lightning …

In its latest update about the U.S. conversion from magnetic-stripe to EMV chip cards, Visa Inc. said more than 3.1 million merchant locations accepted chip cards as of June versus only 392,000 in September 2015. The number of Visa chip cards increased 214% in that time to 499.7 million. Some …

Online-shopping site jClub Inc. said its customers can check out with a single click on mobile or desktop devices using the Google Pay button. Google Pay is a 3-year-old mobile-payment service from Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit. Facing growing concerns about privacy protections on its popular Venmo person-to-person payments service, executives …

Back-to-school shopping means big dollars for many merchants. In fact, the National Retail Federation predicts parents will spend $82.8 billion, and both online and brick-and-mortar retailers are hoping to get a piece of the action. Unfortunately, so are the fraudsters. This year’s back-to-school shopping, already in progress, is sure to …

Criminals were able to infiltrate another point-of-sale system, this one used by Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, a unit of Darden Restaurants. Announced Wednesday, the breach involved Cheddar’s locations in 23 states. Payment card information, including card numbers, from consumers who used them at Cheddar’s restaurants between Nov. 3, 2017, and Jan. …

Finalsite, a marketing and communication platform for the education industry, launched Finalsite Payments by integrating BlueSnap’s Payments for Platforms service. Fiserv Inc. introduced enhanced authentication techniques specifically aimed at call-center fraud. Mercator Advisory Group Inc. released its “U.S. Faster Payments Forecast, 2017-2021, Update: The Consequences of Faster Payments” research report. …

In the wake of a major European outage for Visa Inc. this spring, major U.K. banks reported they had sustained a total of 80 “operational and security incidents” within their payments systems during the second quarter of 2018. British regulators this week began requiring banks to publicly disclose major incidents …

Paysafe Group said it is rebranding merchant acquirer iPayment Holdings Inc. as Paysafe “with immediate effect.” Paysafe acquired iPayment this spring for undisclosed terms. Rewards platform provider Cardlytics Inc. said revenue from Cardlytics Direct, the company’s primary product, hit $35.1 million in the second quarter, up 21% from a year …