The major breach of credit card account data revealed over the weekend, the latest in a string of such incidents over the past six months, may lead to tougher enforcement of data-security standards by the card companies, experts say. The breach, which exposed cardholder names, account numbers, and card verification …

A pair of companies specializing in stored-value products for the underbanked population are reaching beyond prepaid cards to extend credit and savings options to their cardholders. Next Estate Communications Inc., which launched its Green Dot Financial Network to support check-cashing and prepaid cards, already offers its cardholders a program to …

Visa U.S.A. today announced that starting in October it will begin tracking cardholder transaction data at the full 16-digit account number level, allowing issuers and merchants for the first time to target unique promotions and other marketing campaigns at individuals. “Now we can enable [marketing to] a cardholder of one,” …

Addressing a longstanding complaint of independent sales organizations and other nonbank acquirers, MasterCard International has published its operating rules for what the card company calls member service providers. MasterCard says the 291-page document, entitled “Member Service Provider Rules Manual,” is now available free, and has posted a PDF for download. …

Atlanta is where J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. will begin its rollout of contactless cards, starting June 1, the bank announced today. Chase, which said last week it would begin issuing the chip-equipped cards this summer in a region-by-region rollout (Digital Transactions News, May 19), says almost 1 million of …

Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization iPayment Inc. today reported its revenues and processed charge volume more than doubled in the first quarter compared to the year-ago period, with much of the growth driven by a December acquisition of a merchant portfolio from First Data Merchant Services. In a conference call …

The need among online merchants and banks to harden their Web sites against phishing, pharming, and other attacks only rises by the month, and that's helping to drive business for startup companies like The 41st Parameter Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz. The company, formed last year, takes its name from its belief …

DSW Shoe Warehouse's disclosure yesterday that the theft of card data at its stores, originally revealed last month, affected some 1.4 million accounts follows by a week the news that card data stored by New York-based merchant Polo Ralph Lauren had been compromised and casts the spotlight on an industry-backed …

Merchant transactions processed by First Data Corp. grew 38% to 5.28 billion in the quarter ended March 31, sending acquiring processing fees up 19% to $682.7 million?or almost 13 cents per transaction–at the Denver-based processor, according to first-quarter figures released today together with comparisons to the year-ago period. Merchant transactions …

With transaction-data security a top-of-mind concern these days in the wake of such breaches as the ChoicePoint case and the theft of card data from the DSW Shoe Warehouse chain, executives for two leading security-audit firms say their merger couldn't have come at a more propitious time. Chicago-based Ambiron LLC …