All Signs Point to Credit Cards’ Recovery   After getting KO’d in the recession, credit card usage is back on its feet. While card issuers are more cautious than they were a few years ago, consumers who have credit cards are using them more frequently, and they are spending …

  Linda Punch   So-called friendly fraud is hard to detect, hard to prove, and rising for some merchants. What are merchants, acquirers, and tech companies doing to reduce it?   It may be one of the most frustrating types of fraud encountered by a merchant. So-called friendly fraud—also known …

The telecommunications companies that own the Isis mobile-payments joint venture have apparently given up on the idea of creating their own merchant network and instead are redirecting their efforts on a mobile wallet, according to a published report. If confirmed, the Isis move means that the existing payment card networks …

It’s big news, not to mention a major embarrassment, when a leader in data security itself becomes a victim of a serious breach. That was the case for RSA, which stores the tokens widely used by financial institutions as a second factor of authentication for online-payment transactions. In the breach—announced …

Retailers, other merchants, and processors are increasingly embracing online and mobile forms of gift cards and related prepaid products as they seek to give customers as many payment options as possible, according to executives who spoke at this week’s Prepaid Expo USA in Orlando, Fla.   “If you’re not in …

Can the fast pace of innovation  that has characterized the prepaid card  sector in recent years continue  as lawmakers and regulators  increasingly target the business? By Linda Punch After years of skirting the edges of the industry, the prepaid card market finally is getting a toehold in the mainstream of …

The bane of payment cards and to a lesser extent demand-deposit accounts, identity fraud took less of a toll by some measures in 2010 than it has in the seven preceding years, according to new findings from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin’s annual study found that 3.5% of U.S. adults …

At first glance, a review of the data-breach scene in 2010 shows signs of improvement, or at least stabilization, according to figures from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). Although the total number of reported breaches increased to 662 from 498 in 2009, the number of records known to have …

While social media sites are wildly popular with consumers, it turns out those same users give the sites low scores for satisfaction, ranking the category above only airlines and cable and satellite TV providers, according to a report released on Tuesday. Still, that dissatisfaction is unlikely to affect payments processors …

Everyone knows data breaches are expensive and affect a lot of people, but just how much is startling. In a new analysis, Javelin Strategy & Research estimates credit and debit card issuers spent $252.7 million in 2009 replacing more than 70 million cards compromised by data breaches. Analyst Robert Vamosi …