Countless news reports have reported or speculated about what Google Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Facebook Inc. have done or might do in mobile payments. Consumers, however, don’t rate these four companies as highly as they do their own banks or traditional payment companies in trustworthiness involving their financial …

A Look at Durbin’s Early Impact Things went pretty much according to script in the first three months of Durbin Amendment debit card price controls. Debit market leader Visa Inc. got dented while MasterCard Inc. picked up speed. Visa chairman and chief executive Joseph Saunders predicted that the slowdown Visa’s …

Many small merchants have never heard of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, let alone taken steps to comply with its rules. That’s a big problem that acquirers are in the best position to fix. By Lauri Giesen The formation of the PCI Security Standards Council and the related security …

Among all the types of merchants that accept card transactions, coffee shops, pizza parlors, burger places, and food stores might need to keep an extra-careful watch on their card data. If they’re operating as a franchisee and part of a chain, they might want to be especially wary. And if …

Despite a seemingly non-stop parade of headlines about data breaches last year, the number of credit and debit card records compromised actually fell, according to new figures from the Identity Theft Resource Center. The ITRC says it identified 111 data breaches that exposed 3.38 million records in 2011. n In …

  The Star EFT network, which has been working for several years on ways to enable cardholders to conduct PIN-debit transactions with online merchants, said on Thursday it will offer a service from CardinalCommerce Corp. that promises to allow issuers to choose how to authenticate users of PIN-debit cards in …

  Gideon Samid • Gideon@AGSgo.com       It’s time we redefined information security (infosec). I suggest the following: preventing our adversaries from harming our interests using data as a medium.   The more standard definitions for infosec, which talk about such things as eavesdropping and modifying and destroying data …

  What Keeps ATM Execs up at Night?       Complying with new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements and fighting fraudsters who put skimmers on their machines rank high on the to-do lists of ATM managers.   The findings come in a new report from Aite Group LLC …

  While the payments business continues to fret about data breaches, new information emerged this week that helps explain how such pernicious leaks happen, and why they’re happening with increased frequency. While notable breaches like the one at Sony earlier this year steal headlines, cybercriminals are plundering accounts at organizations …

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