Fraud & Security

Data-security services and software specialist Trustwave Holdings Inc. served notice last week that it is planning a $100 million initial public offering, the first such IPO by a company heavily vested in services and technology for the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI. Chicago-based Trustwave’s registration statement, filed with …

Taking a cue from bank card merchant acquirers, bank processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) and NACHA on Monday announced the formation of the Terminated Originator Database, a new service to help banks identify businesses that other banks have cut off from originating automated clearing house transactions because of …

Checks caused most of the losses suffered by businesses victimized by payment fraud in 2010, which is no surprise. Businesses, however, are now falling victim to newer types of fraud, particularly account takeovers, that fraudsters have used against consumers in recent years, according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ latest …

With much of the payments industry and Silicon Valley tech press in a speculative frenzy about what Google Inc., Apple Inc., and Facebook Inc. might or might not do regarding mobile payments, a new study has come along indicating that consumers are complacent, arguably extremely complacent, about protecting personal and …

It’s big news, not to mention a major embarrassment, when a leader in data security itself becomes a victim of a serious breach. That was the case for RSA, which stores the tokens widely used by financial institutions as a second factor of authentication for online-payment transactions. In the breach—announced …

Accertify Inc. this week announced a service aimed at automating most of the functions merchants must follow to contest a chargeback, regardless of the payment method used for the original transaction. The Accertify Chargeback Service has begun a beta test with two unnamed clients and will be commercially available by …

Visa Inc. and electronic-commerce fraud-control and gateway services provider CyberSource Corp. on Monday introduced an enhanced risk-scoring service for online merchants, the first major jointly developed product from the two since Visa bought CyberSource last year. The service will augment CyberSource’s existing risk-assessment system by bringing in data from the …

One of the key tenets of the 6-year-old Payment Card Industry data security standard (PCI) is that merchants should never store unencrypted card data in their systems. But data generated from a recent beta test of a new system-scanning tool shows many merchants, knowingly or unknowingly, are violating this basic …

VeriFone Systems Inc. fired a blast at rival mobile-payments provider Square Inc. on Wednesday and sustained some powder burns in the process, but the leading U.S. point-of-sale terminal maker nonetheless may have brought some legitimate concerns about Square’s security into the open, according to at least one analyst. By Thursday, …

Supposedly mature North America lately is sporting growth rates befitting a green-field market for leading point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. VeriFone, which is moving ahead with plans to buy rival Hypercom Corp., late Tuesday reported that North American revenues increased 43% in its first fiscal 2011 quarter ended Jan. …