Merchant processor Global Payments Inc. confirmed late Friday afternoon that it sustained a data breach following press accounts earlier in the day of a breach variously reported as affecting 50,000 to potentially millions of payment cards. In a press release, Atlanta-based Global “announced it identified and self-reported unauthorized access into …

Online travel agencies are well-known fraud targets, and now new data from CyberSource Corp. suggest that fraudsters make more attempts against them than other sectors of the travel industry. But the data also show that the so-called OTAs’ fraud losses as a percentage of revenue are actually less than elsewhere …

EBay Inc. on Thursday named long-time telecommunications entrepreneur David Marcus as the new president of its PayPal Inc. e-commerce payments unit. Marcus, who as vice president of mobile at PayPal has been shaping the San Jose, Calif.-based processor’s strategic shift into physical-world payments, succeeds Scott Thompson, who left PayPal in …

The Western Union Co. took a decisive step into digital payments and online shopping with the launch last week of the WU Pay platform. The platform allows shoppers in the U.S. to pay for online purchases from their existing bank accounts or in cash at Western Union agent locations. Customers …

Groupon Inc.’s acquisition of a Web site that lets processors bid for merchant contracts represents a big opportunity for the online rewards giant but also underscores the dependence of such services on the merchant-acquiring business, a researcher who follows acquiring says. In the deal, announced on Friday, Groupon bought FeeFighters, …

  n The private beta, as Dwolla dubs its test, will open up to consumers within “ a couple of months,” Charise Flynn, the Des Moines, Iowa-based company’s chief operating officer, tells Digital Transactions News. n About 60 people are involved in the test currently, Flynn says, though most of …

Amazon.com Inc. quietly killed its PayPhrase online-authentication service on Feb. 20, not quite two-and-a-half years after introducing the system. The PayPhrase credentials system allowed online shoppers to check out using only a word or phrase of their choosing and a PIN that they had registered with the Amazon Payments service. …

The news leaked earlier this week, but PayPal confirmed on Thursday it has created a mobile-acceptance product to compete with the myriad such services already on the market from hardware and software companies, as well as merchant processors. Still, PayPal’s product, called PayPal Here, may stand out from the crowd …

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With banks struggling to find their way in the new Durbin era that puts controls on their debit and prepaid card operations, the door is opening wider for American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services to win new prepaid card business, according to two attorneys familiar with payment card interchange …