In the literature and in conversations about it, ransomware appears as a curious oddity on the canvass of cybercrime, a menace for which a healthy dose of cyber hygiene will serve as a satisfactory antidote. The standard advice is: “Watch for shady Web sites and phishy emails, and you will …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews E-commerce fraud, the bane of online retailers and payments providers, is not only on the rise, certain U.S. locations seem more prone to this deceit than others. That’s according to a recent report from Experian plc. Data-specialist Experian says the riskiest ZIP code for shipping-address fraud is …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Visa Inc. plans to phase out static passwords used with its Verified by Visa e-commerce fraud-control service beginning in April 2018. Visa’s announcement precedes even more changes coming to Verified by Visa’s underlying technology called Three-Domain Secure, or 3-Secure. EMVCo, the chip card standards body owned by …

How EMV is fueling a new merchant-network fight over which electronic highways debit card transactions will travel. War has broken out again between big retailers and the bank card networks. Earlier courtroom fights involved everything from honor-all-cards rules to interchange to merchants’ attempts to steer customers away from high-cost credit …

The question is, how to replace it with something more secure? One promising avenue lies in a standard developed by tech companies that belong to the FIDO Alliance. Since the birth of the personal computer, consumers have held tight to the belief that user names and passwords are secure. Those …

Who among us hasn’t, at one time or another, sat in abject frustration as a Web site demanded a user name and password that we simply can’t recall. Most of the time, the information we’re trying to access isn’t crucial, so we can simply move on to something else. But …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews In the quest to position their credit cards as the preferred payment method in mobile wallets, issuers may want to target consumers in the right demographic group who have preferences that match what the card offers, if the newly released “J.D. Power 2016 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study” is …

The failure of Suretap Wallet L.P., the Canadian mobile-payments service controlled by five telecommunications companies, raises further questions about the role, if any, telcos will play in this business, experts tell Digital Transactions News. Suretap, which announced Friday it will shut down effective Aug. 26 after barely more than a …

Last month, I proposed a government-administered program that would offer citizens a cyber passport, a randomized, replaceable, short-lived code that, once issued, would become a requirement for all critical online transactions involving the covered individual. I asserted that this initiative would defeat today’s plague of massive breaches, which turns millions …

The first version of the online-authentication protocol has acquired a nasty rep. With a new version on the way, will it go from four-letter word to four-star performer? It just might be the best-kept secret in payments. An authentication protocol called 3-D Secure, which issuers, acquirers, and merchants have used …