Friday , January 10, 2025

Fraud & Security

Obama Uses His Bully Pulpit To Push Cybersecurity—and Endorse PIN-Based EMV

By Jim Daly President Barack Obama on Friday signed an executive order committing the federal government to offer and accept Europay-MasterCard-Visa- (EMV) chip cards. A retailer trade group quickly praised Obama for endorsing the chip-and-PIN variety of EMV when others in the payment card industry would make do with chip-and-signature …

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BofA Becomes First Major Issuer to Begin Conversion to Debit Chip Cards

  Bank of America Corp. isn’t waiting for 2015 to convert its debit card portfolio to plastic that supports Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip transactions. The Charlotte, N.C.-based banking giant announced Tuesday it will begin issuing debit chip cards to new customers in October, with cards for existing accountholders issued as these …

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Now the Top Phishing Target, Apple Could Draw More Cyber Crooks with Apple Pay

Apple Inc. is selling a ton of its new iPhone 6 smart phones, but before launching the device earlier this month it had already attracted a much less desirable crowd of devotees: phishers. Among all brands targeted by these cybercriminals, Apple is now tops, and the company’s expected introduction next …

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Research Finds That As Payments Get More Complex, So Do Security, Regulatory Issues

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s announcement this week that it will be offering checking accounts to consumers through Green Dot Corp.’s GoBank mobile-banking services reopened old fissures between banks and non-banking companies over offering financial services to consumers, fissures that radiate out to the topic of payments security. At the Federal Reserve …

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The Payments Industry Needs To Find Common Ground on Tokenization, Group Says

Tokens, that is, tokens for securing electronic payments, almost became a household word two weeks ago when Apple Inc. introduced Apple Pay, a mobile-payments service that will rely heavily on tokens when it launches next month. The concept of tokenization, however, has been around for quite some time in the …

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More Small Businesses Use Mobile Devices for Payments, Raising Security Issues

More than a fifth of small and mid-sized businesses use mobile devices to accept payments, almost twice the rate of mobile acceptance two years ago, but all too few of those businesses are concerned about payment security, according to new findings from ControlScan Inc. According to the survey of 6,186 …

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With 56 Million Cards Compromised, Home Depot’s Data Breach Surpasses Target’s

Just when you thought retailer data breaches wouldn’t get much bigger, they did. Home-improvement retailer The Home Depot Inc. disclosed Thursday that the breach it confirmed Sept. 8 compromised 56 million payment cards between April and this month. That means Home Depot’s breach affected 40% more cards than the 40 …

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Apple Pay: No Charge for Merchants, But Transaction-Security Fees for Issuers

Apple Inc.’s introduction of its new Apple Pay service for its soon-to-be released iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch raised a huge number of questions in the payments industry. One of the biggest topics of speculation is just how is Apple going to make money from the service, with combines …

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Home Depot Hires Data-Security Firms As Other Merchants Contend With Breaches

  Big box hardware retailer The Home Depot Inc. has hired two data-security firms to delve into its point-of-sale systems to determine the extent of a possible breach first reported on Tuesday. Security site KrebsOnSecurity.com said then that several banks it contacted said they saw evidence that Home Depot stores …

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Effective in 2015, Two New ACH Rules Will Change Returns Threshold, Impose New Fees

The regulatory body for the automated clearing house network on Tuesday unveiled two new network rules that, among other changes, will lower a key threshold for unauthorized returns, impose new fees on originating banks for unauthorized debits, and hand new enforcement authority to the ACH regulator, Herndon, Va.-based NACHA. The …

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