If a recently released annual survey is any indication, small merchants remain unconvinced they are vulnerable to data breaches, pay far too little attention to security, and regard PCI simply as a cost item. “We still see drastic deficiencies in the number of merchants who think they’re at risk,” says …

Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards will come to the U.S., but probably not before the payment card networks postpone current deadlines and offer strong incentives for merchants that might include interchange relief and dumping the signature as a cardholder- verification method, according to a new research report from Celent LLC. Card …

ABnote is adding support for near-field communication (NFC) technology to its miWallet mobile wallet with the addition of the Wave device from Israeli technology vendor On Track Innovations Ltd., ABnote recently announced. The device connects to mobile devices using the audio jack on smart phones and tablets. When connected, it …

How to improve the U.S. payment system? Figure out a way to make electronic payments faster and more secure, as well as a system that would connect various closed-loop payment networks with hundreds of millions accounts. And reduce regulation, too. Those were some of the ideas bandied about Thursday at …

Coming on the heels of the release last week by the PCI Security Standards Council of a revised Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) is a report Tuesday that shows how much progress small merchants are making in locking down card data—and how painfully slow much of that progress has …

Independent sales organizations and other acquirers could exploit Google Inc.’s move to decouple mobile payments based on near-field communication technology from a phone-based secure element, observers say. At the same time, much depends on how the mobile carriers, which have held tight control over the secure element, react to Google’s …

Token Specs: Curb Your Enthusiasm The three biggest card networks would just like everybody to calm down. As dramatic as their joint tokenization announcement was last month, key officials with Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and American Express Co. have been at pains to tamp down the far-reaching industry speculation the …

Gideon Samid • Gideon@BitMint.com Last month, The Guardian published yet another revelation by Edward Snowden, who claims a high patriotic calling but is regarded by U.S. officials as committing high treason. Mr. Snowden claims the National Security Agency (NSA) has secretly cryptanalyzed the popular ciphers used in America and around …

Peter Lucas Having invested in new equipment, payment card manufacturers are ready to churn out EMV cards by the millions in the U.S. But issuers that wait too long could be caught short. Common in nearly all of the developed world, Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards have been a long time …

Some dragons are harder to slay than others, and a few are fire-breathing. Here’s our annual look at the industry’s fiercest beasts, this time ranging from the endless war over interchange to eager-beaver regulators to the woes of digital currency. By John Stewart and Jim Daly If payments were easy, …