News

March, 2016

• 29 March

  EMVCo Rolls Out Its PAR Data Element To Reduce Security Threats to Card Numbers

  EMVCo, the chip card standards body owned by the world’s largest payment card networks, on Tuesday formally updated its tokenization specification to include the new Payment Account Reference data element. The purpose of PAR is to match tokens to the underlying primary account number of a credit or debit card …
• 29 March

  Facebook In-Store Payments Speculation and other Digital Transactions News briefs

  • Nearly half—48%—of ATM operators did not have EMV acceptance enabled on their machines at the end of 2015, finds the 2016 ATM Channel EMV Readiness Survey released by the ATM Industry Association. Fourteen months ago, the survey predicted that figure would be 12%. Continuing uncertainty and confusion, routing issues, and …
• 28 March

  As With Payments in General, Mobile Is Steadily Taking Share of Banking Transactions

  There’s no turning back from the mobile phenomenon for financial transactions as a new survey finds that 41% of consumers use their smart phones to make bank transactions, such as person-to-person payments, paying bills, and making check deposits, up from 36% in 2014, says consultancy Mercator Advisory Group Inc. While …
• 28 March

  Report: PayPal Likely To Deflect New Competition From a Browser-Based Apple Pay

  PayPal Holdings Inc.’s shares took a hit last week when a media report said Apple Inc. plans to launch a mobile-browser version of its Apple Pay service, potentially making Apple Pay a stronger competitor to the online and mobile-payments leader. But a payments analyst says any new competition from Apple …
• 28 March

  A Smoother Experience, Coupled With Rising Online Fraud, Sparks Interest in 3-D Secure

  Once widely disparaged as an unwieldy fraud solution, 3-D Secure is back on the radar screens of risk managers at major online merchants and card issuers. Improvements in the 15-year-old technology, combined with surging e-commerce fraud, are driving the renewed interest, experts say. “Two-and-a-half years ago, zero U.S. online merchants …
• 25 March

  Mobile’s Bigger Role in Payments Offers Data With Dual Benefits for Combating Fraud

  Acquirers and financial institutions can put consumer and merchant affinity for smart phones to work for them when trying to comply with anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer regulations. Smart-phone activity, whether it’s purchasing behavior, location habits, or personally identifiable information associated with the wireless carrier account, can be used to vet the …
• 24 March

  Durbin’s Debit Law Is Eyed As Part of a Sweeping Financial Regulatory Review

    Not yet five years after its implementation, a controversial federal regulation governing interchange and transaction routing for debit cards has come under review as part of a process set out by a 20-year-old law called the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act. The debit card regulation, the Federal …
• 24 March

  Cash Preference Weakens As Younger Consumers Go for Cards, Especially Debit

  Industry efforts to persuade consumers to use credit and debit cards for small-ticket purchases may be paying off, at least among younger consumers, finds a survey from CreditCards.com, a card comparison site for consumers. In the survey of more than 600 U.S. adult credit card holders sampled in early March, …
• 24 March

  PayPal, Card Brands Gain More Than Banks in Consumer Mobile-Wallet Preferences

  If consumers wanted a mobile wallet in 2013 and 2014, they wanted it from their primary financial institution. But things changed in 2015, when PayPal and Visa surpassed banks and credit unions as preferred wallet providers. That’s the bad news for financial institutions in a new report about mobile wallets …
• 24 March

  Apple Pay May Be Coming to M-Commerce Sites and other Digital Transactions News briefs

  • Starbucks Corp. said JPMorgan Chase & Co. by year’s end will issue a Visa-branded Starbucks reloadable prepaid card that will allow cardholders to earn Starbucks “stars,” or loyalty points, for purchases just about anywhere Visa is accepted; the new card is an extension of Starbucks’ relationship with JPMorgan Chase’s …