Smart Cards

• Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. appointed William I. Jacobs, who joined its board of directors in April, as board chairman. The chairman spot had been held by CEO Steve Streit, but the company, which recently had a proxy fight, is separating the roles. Jacobs currently is chairman of …

Merchants, in their argument for PIN rather than signature authentication for EMV chip card transactions, may have industry opinion on their side. According to an informal poll conducted this week by Digital Transactions News, two-thirds of readers agree that the merchants suing the card networks over the issue have a …

With the U.S. EMV transition just getting into high gear, the number of EMV chip cards worldwide increased last year by 1.4 billion, or 41%, the EMVCo standards body reported Thursday. Meanwhile, Discover Financial Services joined the other three U.S. general-purpose payment card networks in taking steps to speed up …

MasterCard Inc. on Monday is releasing a new policy aimed at speeding the testing and certification of EMV chip card terminals at U.S. merchant locations. The policy change, which the Purchase, N.Y.-based network says will cut test time to a few hours from as much as a couple of weeks, …

Even the most fervent advocate of EMV would have to admit the U.S conversion to chip cards has been a rocky one, especially for merchants. On Thursday, Visa Inc. announced a four-part plan it clearly hopes will remedy at least some of the more acute headaches, including certification backlogs and …

American Express Co. made available Wednesday the AmEx Quick Chip program that enables a seemingly speedier EMV chip card transaction. Similar to what MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. recently announced, the AmEx program enables consumers to remove their AmEx chip cards from readers once the card has been verified instead …

Visa Inc. on Tuesday reported that gas stations using a service it introduced two years ago to prevent card fraud at fuel pumps has reduced counterfeit fraud by 54%. Visa says that more than 35,000 U.S. gas stations now use its Visa Transaction Advisor technology at the pump, and that …

The U.S. conversion to EMV chip cards has produced a windfall for VeriFone Systems Inc. over the past couple of years. But despite record revenues in the quarter ended April 30, delays in getting EMV equipment certified contributed to sharply lower profits and financial expectations for the leading domestic point-of-sale …

Nearly 283 million Visa-branded credit and debit cards issued by U.S. financial institutions now have an EMV chip, Visa Inc. reports. In addition, some 1.1 million U.S. merchant locations that accept Visa cards now take chip cards. In the latest of the payment card networks’ updates on the U.S. chip …

• The ATM Industry Association teamed up with media and conference firm Reconnaissance International to organize a series of international events under the “ATM & Cash Innovation” moniker. • Vantiv Integrated Payments, a Vantiv Inc. company, began the next phase of its Security Pays program to encourage business owners to …