Linda Punch New authentication tools and other technologies are dimming the once-bright line between card-present and card-not-present transactions. Will the card networks take note of that trend any time soon? In an era of mobile wallets, tap-and-go, and other alternative payments using devices other than traditional cards and card readers, …

Financially struggling contactless card technology provider ViVOtech Inc. insisted just over a month ago when it sold its hardware business that it was staying in operation and focusing on software. But now the company appears to be headed toward liquidation. A document sent to creditors and others with a financial …

ViVOtech Inc., a pioneer in contactless payments and near-field communication (NFC) technology, disclosed Monday that it sold its card-reader business to ID Tech, a manufacturer of smart card readers and point-of-sale hardware and identity-verification products. The subject of reports last week that it was laying off people and possibly going …

The hackers who broke into merchant processor Global Payments Inc.’s computer systems added a new chapter to the disreputable history of data breaches by gaining access to information from applicants for merchant accounts, the company disclosed late Tuesday. Global’s revelation apparently is the first publicly known incidence of merchant-applicant information …

Merchant processor Global Payments Inc. says it believes fewer than 1.5 million card numbers were taken from its processing system in a data breach disclosed on Friday. Meanwhile, Visa Inc. has removed Global from its list of merchant processors compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI), but Global …

  Gideon Samid • Gideon@AGSgo.com       Yesterday’s visionaries shocked their audience by proclaiming a distant reality of “a phone in every home.” Today’s visionaries proclaim “a home in every phone.” And an office too, and with it your school, your movie theatre, your bank!   Computers, entertainment systems, …

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 alliance MasterCard Inc. announced earlier this week with Intel Corp. to secure e-commerce transactions will not supersede SecureCode, a MasterCard online authentication system, but will fairly soon lead to a new type of contactless-payment device from an emerging category of ultra-thin, fast-start PCs, executives with both companies tell Digital …

  n To use PayPal Access, a site must sign up for a PayPal account but is not obliged to accept PayPal. The new system then gives the site access to some 100 million active PayPal users, who can control how much information they want to share. If a user …

  By Peter Lucas   Spam e-mail may be a constant irritant to consumers, but it’s big business for merchant acquirers willing to settle transactions resulting from those unsolicited ads. Can anything be done to stop it?       Every day some unsuspecting consumer receives an unsolicited e-mail from …