Fraud & Security

Security jitters have hit the payments industry, and it’s no wonder. The arrival of new and sophisticated ways to spoof identities, coupled with the rapid rise of mobile usage for banking and payments, has created a minefield for security professionals charged with guarding accounts and the money they hold. The …

The bad news about payments risk just keeps on coming. The Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc. reported this week that phishing attacks reached an all-time high in 2016, totaling 1,220,523. That was up fully 65% over 2015, the group says in its latest quarterly report. Another way to look at the …

• In separate blog posts, PayPal Holdings Inc. executive vice president Bill Ready and chief executive Dan Schulman reported the company has reached 200 million total consumer, merchant, and charity accounts. They also said the PayPal’s One Touch authentication technology has signed up 50 million consumers and more than 5 million merchant accounts, …

In the February, 2017, issue of Digital Transactions, Steve Mott argues that the U.S. EMV migration was a misguided, poorly planned, and poorly executed effort. In his article, “The Great EMV Hangover,” he considers the migration to be a failure, writing, “As 2016 wound to a close, nothing short of …

• Abilene Diagnostic Clinic has adopted the One Bill solution from health-care payments processor InstaMed, allowing patients to deal with a single statement embracing all ADC locations. • In related news, Change Healthcare, a specialist in analytics software, introduced Personalized Communications for its billing and payments solution. The new service is aimed at billing …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The lingering impact of some retailers’ slow conversion to EMV chip card acceptance continued to plague prepaid card services provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. in the fourth quarter. Blackhawk reported late Wednesday that revenues fell short of its expectations in part because of a “continued EMV headwind” …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Security jitters have hit the payments industry, and it’s no wonder. The arrival of new and sophisticated ways to spoof identities, coupled with the rapid rise of mobile usage for banking and payments, has created a minefield for security professionals charged with guarding accounts and the …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews In an early glimpse of how U.S. businesses are using faster payments, the governing body for the automated clearing house issued survey results Tuesday showing that 90% of respondents at surveyed financial institutions report same-day ACH origination volume at or above what they expected. The same …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews An investigation by hotel operator InterContinental Hotels Group PLC found malware had been installed on servers that processed payment cards at restaurants and bars in 12 IHG-managed properties, the company said. And a federal appellate court told a lower court to investigate whether the class of customers …

Counterfeiting is still the king of U.S. payment card fraud, according to the Federal Reserve’s recently released Payments Study 2016, but probably not for long thanks in part to the coming of EMV chip cards and the aftereffects of data breaches. Counterfeit fraud accounted for 44% of U.S. payment card …