• Yahoo! Inc. disclosed Wednesday a breach of more than 1 billion user accounts in August 2013 that is separate from one involving 500 million accounts the Web giant announced in September. Yahoo said the new breach involved names, email addresses, birth dates, secure passwords, and security questions and answers, but did not …

Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. have been tokenizing their payment cards since 2014, but have not been able to access tokens for cards branded by the other network. That will change soon as the result of an agreement announced separately Thursday by Visa and MasterCard. Under the agreement, Visa will be able …

Payments Canada, operator of three major payment systems in that country, issued a five-point plan Thursday to put Canada on a path toward faster and more efficient electronic payments. The plan has many similarities with efforts by Canada’s southern neighbor to modernize payments, but also some differences, according to a …

• Cyber criminals can guess Visa card numbers and other information required for fraudulent online purchases in a matter of seconds, according to researchers. By distributing multiple guesses across many sites, the method avoids triggering automated guess limits at any single site, according to a paper in IEEE Security & Privacy, a …

In a move that expands its business as a provider of risk-control services for merchants and card issuers, Visa Inc. announced Thursday that it has a deal to acquire e-commerce payment-authentication provider CardinalCommerce Corp. Founded in 1999, Mentor, Ohio-based CardinalCommerce’s signature product is Cardinal Secure Authentication, a service that uses …

If you’re not, and you’re a retailer with physical stores, you should be. But there’s a way to fight back. Proprietary mobile apps show the way. Amazon.com Inc. is on a tear. Reports show the online retailer accounted for 24 cents of every $1 in retail sales growth in 2015, …

Our cover story this month describes the security issues surrounding the so-called Internet of Things. That’s the increasingly intricate network of devices using the Internet to control everything from garage doors to thermostat settings. In many cases, payments flow over this IoT, and therein lies the problem. As our story …

Payments power our society. Fair payment for goods and services is the mechanism that allows for the division of labor and the operation of a modern community. But what happens when payment is not fair? Commerce is choked by overpricing, while underpricing sends the seller to compensate himself in alternative …

Fintech—Patti Hewitt, a.k.a. Paymentgal, observes that financial institutions need to reinvent the retail account to offer more than just the simple liquidity they’ve provided “for centuries.” She sees the bank-customer relationship itself as up for grabs. The reason is the rise of fintech, well-funded non-bank financial-services startups with deep technology …

Even though independent software vendors (ISVs) have been working with payments processors for years, the developers still represent a major opportunity for acquirers and processors. That’s because 49% of ISVs do not integrate payments functionality into their systems, according to new research from First Annapolis Consulting, an Annapolis, Md.-based payments-advisory …