News

January, 2014

• 9 January

  Rapidly Expanding Online Merchant Base Could Give Shopify an Edge in Mobile Battle

  Shopify Inc.’s recent move to offer its merchants a mobile point-of-sale application marks yet another entry in a market that has filled up fast with competitors ranging from PayPal Inc. to Square Inc. and dozens in between. “You would think we’d reached everybody [with mobile POS products], but we haven’t,” …
• 9 January

  Eye on Transit: A New Fare System for D.C.; New York Ponders a MetroCard Successor

  America’s mass-transit systems in early 2014 are continuing their migration away from proprietary fare systems and toward so-called open-fare systems that can accept general-purpose payment cards as well as mobile payments. This week, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, locally known as Metro, awarded a $184 million, 8-year contract to …
• 9 January

  Sequoia Promises Mobile Payments at Card-Present Rates, With No NFC or Bluetooth

  A mobile point-of-sale service called Sequoia is promising card-present transaction rates for merchants using it, says developer 1Oak Technologies. n Using technology already inside smart phones, the app then creates an encrypted radio wave that is picked up by the Sequoia receiver attached to the payment terminal. That device creates …
• 9 January

  With Marijuana Sales Now Legal in Colorado, Will the Smoke Clear on Pot Payments?

  The smoke seemed to clear a bit this week on the status of electronic payments for Colorado shops selling now-legal recreational marijuana, but the nascent merchant category still remains in what effectively is a legal no man’s land between conflicting state and federal laws. Some 20 states and the District …
• 9 January

  Authentication Layer Helps E-Commerce Conversion Rates in Some Countries, Not in Others

  The online payment card authentication technology known as Three Domain, or 3-D, Secure, and marketed as MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa, have mixed impacts on e-commerce conversion rates around the world, according to a joint study commissioned by international payment gateway Adyen and consulting firm Edgar, Dunn & Co. …
• 8 January

  With Starbucks As Inspiration, Mercury Launches a Card And App for Small Merchants

  Noting the success Starbucks Corp. has had with its prepaid card and mobile app, Mercury Payment Systems LLC figures the small merchants it serves would like to create a similar program but lack Starbucks’s considerable resources. To bring such a program within reach, the Durango, Colo.-based merchant processor this week …
• 7 January

  Online Game Provider Zynga Looks to Diversify Its Payment Options With a Bitcoin Test

  The Bitcoin virtual currency continued its march toward the payments mainstream with the recent announcement by online game developer Zynga Inc. that it would test Bitcoin acceptance with some of its popular games. n “In response to Bitcoin’s rise in popularity around the world, Zynga, with help from BitPay, is …

December, 2013

• 31 December

  Research Group Picks Judge’s Overturning of Fed’s Durbin Rule as 2013’s Top Payments Event

  We couldn’t recruit David Letterman to help us with this article, but what follows are the Top 10 U.S. payments events of 2013 as identified by the Retail Payments Risk Forum, a research and industry-dialogue unit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. 10. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized …
• 27 December

  Target Confirms Encrypted PINs Stolen As Part of Breach, Says Debit Accounts Remain ‘Safe’

  Target Corp. on Friday confirmed that data thieves obtained customers’ encrypted debit card PINs, but said the sensitive numbers remain useless to the criminals because of the technology masking them. ”While we previously shared that encrypted data was obtained, this morning through additional forensics work we were able to confirm …
• 26 December

  Target Denies Reports That Data Thieves’ Haul Included PINs

  Target Corp. is denying a widely circulated report that the information stolen by cyber criminals in a massive breach of credit and debit card data included customer’s debit card PINs Citing a “senior payments executive familiar with the situation,” Reuters reported early Christmas Day that the data thieves have the …