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  When news broke last month about a major card-data breach at Michaels Stores Inc., an arts-and-crafts chain, two things came to mind: 1) this type of fraud seems never to end, with Michael’s being just the latest in a long and somber line of retail and processor breaches; and …

  All Signs Point to Credit Cards’ Recovery   After getting KO’d in the recession, credit card usage is back on its feet. While card issuers are more cautious than they were a few years ago, consumers who have credit cards are using them more frequently, and they are spending …

  Linda Punch   So-called friendly fraud is hard to detect, hard to prove, and rising for some merchants. What are merchants, acquirers, and tech companies doing to reduce it?   It may be one of the most frustrating types of fraud encountered by a merchant. So-called friendly fraud—also known …

  Canada seems to have found a workable formula for rolling out EMV technology.   Can the U.S. learn from it?   By Peter Lucas   Payment card executives in the United States looking to follow a model for how to roll out EMV cards and terminals need look no …

  Kevin Barry   Finding another, unaffiliated PIN-debit network is now mandated by law, but it also makes sense strategically and tactically. Issuers must act quickly, though, to realize the full advantage of the move.   In the past, card issuers have largely partnered with debit networks and promoted authentication …

n Visa Inc. announced on Wednesday a digital wallet aimed at increasing its share of transactions in mobile payments, e-commerce, and at the point of sale. n The digital wallet will store all the payment cards in a consumer’s wallet, including non-Visa branded cards, Jim McCarthy, Visa's head of global …

  Security Peter Lucas While it’s effective against malware like the pesky Zeus Trojan, banks have been slow to adopt out-of-band authentication. Now, with mobile and P2P applications growing, that may soon change. Imagine the following scenario: A cybercrook plants a malware Trojan, infamously known as Zeus, in the Web …

  M-Commerce   Todd Ablowitz Yes, the PCI Security Council’s timeout on standards for mobile payments has sewn confusion and uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean the industry has to stand still.   The buzz surrounding mobile payments is gaining momentum. The influx of payments software from traditional payments providers and …

  Endpoint A few smaller banks get it, and have issued EMV cards to their customers who travel abroad. But most bigger banks are still on the sidelines. We’re still stuck with the mag stripe and all of its attendant problems because the big banks have too great a stake …