Ransomware payments exploded last year, with the average payment rising 78% year-over-year to $541,010, according to data compiled by cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks.Blackbaud Inc., a cloud software company serving nonprofits, said clients of its Blackbaud Merchant Services unit can now accept payments via both PayPal and Venmo in the United …

The fast-growing field of open banking got another boost Monday when the big payment processor Fiserv Inc. announced a major industry player, MX Technologies Inc., will use its AllData Connect service. AllData Connect is part of Fiserv’s AllData Aggregation platform that provides consumer-permitted access to tokenized financial account and transaction …

Block Inc., parent company of Square Inc., has become the latest payments provider to come under the scrutiny of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB, as well as attorneys general from multiple states, have requested information from Block related to how the company handles complaints and disputes from customers …

Financial institutions have been cooperating with fintechs for years on data exchanges. But now banks need to get on the receiving end, says Sarah Grotta. Conceptually, open banking is a straightforward premise. Consumers allow their financial institution to share specific financial data electronically and securely with authorized third parties. Access …

The past two years have seen merchants become frequent targets of ransomware attacks, largely due to their weaker cybersecurity practices. The threat only promises to get worse. For cybercriminals, ransomware attacks are easy money. To cash in, hackers need only plant malware on a target’s network to gain entry. Once …

The Visa Acceptance Cloud will virtualize POS terminals. What will that mean for acquirers and merchants? The dawn of a new era for point-of-sale terminals may be upon the payments industry with the announcement earlier this year of the Visa Acceptance Cloud. The platform aims to move to a cloud-based …

Phishing attacks in December totaled 316,747, the highest monthly total ever recorded by Anti-Phishing Working Group, (APWG) since it began tracking the cybercrime in 2004. Overall, the number of phishing attacks has tripled from early 2020, when the APWG was observing between 68,000 and 94,000 attacks per month. The APWG, …

That visual, machine-interface technology we all know from the grocery store is experiencing a renaissance. The first item to be marked with a Universal Product Code or barcode tracks back more than forty years. But now the technology is brand new again, expanded in form to the quick-response (QR) code …

As part of its strategy to enable application developers to create solutions fully compliant with open-banking regulations around the world, Cloudentity, a provider authorization technology, has joined the Google Cloud Partner Advantage program as a technology partner to Apigee, Google Cloud’s API Management platform. The partnership combines Apigee’s API management platform with Cloudentity’s …

Given the wild success of buy now, pay later loans, it’s no surprise fraudsters have found a way to get in the game. To help card issuers offering BNPL installment options post-purchase reduce the risk of fraud, Outseer, an authentication subsidiary of Bedford, Mass.-based data-security services provider RSA, on Wednesday …