Fraud & Security

  The world’s airlines are seeing less fraud these days in their online bookings, thanks to more experience with Web-based ticket sales and wider usage of fraud-fighting tools, according to a study released on Wednesday. Overall, online fraud for air carriers dropped 31%, from $1.7 billion to $1.4 billion, between …

At least some banks and merchants may be forging ahead into chip card payments, but presentations at an industry trade show this week leave doubt whether the rest of the industry is ready to follow. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has now enabled all of its U.S. stores with terminals to accept …

Square Inc. has been the mobile-payments darling of Silicon Valley because of its association with social-network superstar Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter. On Wednesday, however, the San Francisco-based startup gained the ultimate stamp of approval from the payments establishment when it disclosed that Visa Inc., the world’s largest payment …

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 …