The merchant-acquiring industry can expect more market consolidation and more attention to security, and it also will have to adjust to the secular shift away from credit and toward debit, according to a new assessment of market trends from Mercator Advisory Group Inc. Portfolio sales and acquisitions of smaller processors …

Kemesa LLC entered the war on online fraud on Monday with a product that allows consumers to pay e-commerce merchants using so-called anonymous data that would be useless to cyber thieves. The Aventura, Fla.-based startup says it plans to market the product to consumers through their financial institutions and is …

Nearly a year after ordering the phase-out of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), a technology introduced in 1999 to protect data flowing over wireless networks, the PCI Security Standards Council this week released new guidelines for enhanced wireless security. The so-called Payment Card Industry data security standard wireless, written by the …

Verient Inc. is the startup behind SafeDebit, NYCE Payments Network LLC's effort to allow consumers to use their NYCE cards on the Internet (Digital Transactions News, July 2), but the company's ambitions go well beyond enabling debit-based e-commerce. By the end of the year, it expects to have between 3,000 …

Security issues weigh more heavily on the minds of executives with merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations than they do among any other payment card industry sector, according to new research from Aite Group LLC. Some 43% of acquiring executives rated data security, including compliance with the Payment Card Industry …

A payments-focused group of heavyweight merchants is emerging from obscurity to push for new standards to protect credit and debit card data. But just how these standards would complement or possibly conflict with the existing Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) remains unknown. The organization, called the Merchant Advisory Group, …

The recent massive data breaches at RBS WorldPay Inc. and Heartland Payment Systems Inc. ?two merchant acquirers deemed in compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard by qualified assessors?left many in the industry questioning the effectiveness of the PCI standard. But a newly released report from Verizon Business concludes …

Reduced buying from merchant acquirers, the stock-market downdraft, and currency fluctuations teamed up to take a big bite out of payment card terminal maker VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s latest financials. VeriFone late Tuesday reported a $182 million loss for its first fiscal 2009 quarter ended Jan. 31, and its boss predicts …

Fraudsters are running an online trading post for highly sophisticated code that allows criminals to more easily steal consumers' log-on credentials, Social Security Numbers, PINs, and other confidential information, according to the latest report from RSA Security Inc.'s Anti-Fraud Command Center. The fraudster Web site, which RSA analysts call a …

The latest data-breach battleground has shifted to merchant-acquiring and prepaid card territory. Atlanta-based RBS WorldPay, a big acquirer owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group that also provides prepaid card programs, late Tuesday afternoon reported a breach of its computer system that may have compromised personal information on about …