Mastercard Inc. enjoyed a strong third quarter, and Tuesday morning its top executive was not shy about celebrating some of the trends that he expects will further lift results for the world’s second-largest payment card network. These include recent acquisitions, a global partnership with PayPal Holdings Inc., and budding developments …
Read More »Western Union and Mastercard Bring a New Twist to Money Transfers
The Western Union Co. this week positioned itself to fend off competition from peer-to-peer payment services by partnering with Mastercard Inc. to integrate Mastercard Send into its money-transfer service. The service, which is expected to be available in only the United States starting in early 2018, will allow consumers to …
Read More »Americans’ ‘Password Hygiene’ Is Getting Worse, International Study Finds
Despite non-stop news reports about data breaches, Americans over the past year have gotten sloppier about their usage of passwords to protect their financial accounts online. That’s the word from research firm Aite Group LLC and Visa Inc., which recently announced results of their second annual Global Security Engagement Scorecard …
Read More »Mastercard Scrubs Its Signature Requirement for POS Transactions
Mastercard Inc. is doing away with a rule requiring merchants to get signatures for transactions made with its credit and debit cards in the United States and Canada. Announced early Thursday, Mastercard’s rule change goes into effect April 13, 2018, allowing issuers, merchants, and processors time to make adjustments, though …
Read More »Visa ID Intelligence Aims To Be A Digital Authentication Hub
Issuers, merchants, and processors all share the same dilemma when attempting to authenticate an online identity. They are bedeviled by personally identifiable information easily accessible to criminals that they can use to spoof authentic consumers. In response, Visa Inc. on Thursday announced the Visa ID Intelligence service, which it says …
Read More »CPI Receives Card Patents and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 10/18/17
For U.S. Bancorp’s Elavon unit, merchant-processing revenues were down slightly in the third quarter, to $405 million, compared to a year ago, according to the bank’s earnings release. But revenue year to date is up 0.2%, at $1.19 billion, compared to the same period in 2016. Payment card manufacturer CPI …
Read More »They May Not Like the Terms, But Issuers Will Likely Re-Up for Apple Pay
The first big wave of Apple Pay contracts are expiring this month, and a big question for both Apple Inc. and the financial institutions that committed to support the computing giant’s mobile-payments app is whether to renew, and under what terms, in the face of less-than-spectacular results for mobile payments …
Read More »FDIC May Have Been Hit With Up to 54 Data Breaches in the Past Two Years, Auditor Says
As the insurer for deposits at most of the nation’s banks, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. collects a large amount of personally identifying information on bank customers. As such, the FDIC is a target for hackers, who hit it with 54 suspected or confirmed data breaches discovered between Jan. 1, …
Read More »Sonic Drive-In Confirms Payment Breach of an Unknown Number of Cards
Add Sonic Drive-In to the roster of merchants that have experienced a breach of their payments systems. The Oklahoma City-based fast-food chain confirmed to Digital Transaction News that it has been investigating the incident. On Tuesday, security blog KrebsOnSecurity.com reported the breach affecting an unknown number of Sonic’s point-of-sale systems. …
Read More »COMMENTARY: Debunking Six Mythical Barriers Along the Path to Contactless Cards
The foundational technology for contactless credit cards has existed for some time, but we haven’t seen them adopted en masse yet, at least not Stateside. Much of that reluctance has to do with perceived obstacles or assumptions—perceptions that may or may not be entirely accurate. Following are objective responses to …
Read More »