As POS systems gain ground, vendors strive to keep merchants happy with more than single-purpose payment terminals. Enter the app store. Adaptability as a survival mechanism not only has a role in nature, but in the payments arena, too. One area where that’s manifested is in the adoption of a …

The financial-services industry is closer than you think to widespread adoption of biometric authentication, says Kirsty Tull. Here’s why. There is always that scene in action and spy movies. You know the one. In Mission: Impossible, they must defeat the facial-recognition system to access some secret data. James Bond’s gun …

Cyberfraud is maturing into a stable, highly profitable business, adopting modern management principles and investing heavily in innovation. It has already evolved into an impressive, sophisticated, well-managed, capitalistic environment, composed of bold hack-innovators, hack-services providers, hack analytics, hack market promoters, and some hacking line soldiers, who are the ones who …

Counterfeiting is still the king of U.S. payment card fraud, according to the Federal Reserve’s recently released Payments Study 2016, but probably not for long thanks in part to the coming of EMV chip cards and the aftereffects of data breaches. Counterfeit fraud accounted for 44% of U.S. payment card …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Payments professionals who suspect fraud is getting significantly worse were confirmed in their suspicions Wednesday with a report indicating identity fraud hit an all-time high in 2016, affecting some 15.4 million U.S. consumers. That’s up nearly 18% from 2015 and represents a one-third increase from the …

• Processor Vantiv Inc. reported its Merchant Services unit increased net revenue in the quarter ended Dec. 31 14% to $412 million from $363 million in the year-ago quarter on a 13% rise in transactions and 1% increase in net revenue per transaction. For all of 2016, Merchant Services’ net revenue jumped …

• Merchant acquirer Square Inc. announced a promotion that waives processing costs for small businesses on more than $12,000 in Apple Pay charge volume. It will give free processing on Apple Pay transactions for small-business customers that enroll this year in a promotion that includes purchase of Square’s contactless and EMV chip card reader …

• Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) reported that it is talking with the Federal Trade Commission to settle the FTC’s November lawsuit accusing TSYS’s NetSpend prepaid card unit of deceptively marketing reloadable prepaid cards. TSYS took a $13 million charge in the fourth quarter in connection with the settlement talks. • Newtek …

The Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force is in the final stages of reviewing 19 proposals to speed up U.S. electronic payments, Fed executives tell Digital Transactions News. The faster-payments initiative is part of the Fed’s broader Payment System Improvement project that also addresses security and efficiency issues. The Fed …

• A survey released by RestaurantOwner.com, a resource enterprise for independent restaurant owners, found that the average cost of a restaurant POS system is $13,344, compared with $18,000 in 2012. Only 10% of the 1,190 respondents said they use pay-at-the-table devices, and only 31% used EMV-compliant systems. • Restaurant Brands International, parent company …