On Tuesday, Plaid Inc., a bellwether of the open-banking movement, announced the availability of Plaid Portal US, a privacy tool for consumers using Plaid’s technology. The move comes as firms that connect financial-services providers with consumer-account data seek to help account owners manage how their information is distributed and used by …

Data-compromise incidents hit an all-time high in 2021, totaling 1,862, up 23% from the previous record high of 1,506 in 2017, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s Annual Data Breach Report. On a year-over-year basis, the number of the compromises increased 68% in 2021, compared to 2020. The number …

Consumers have relied more heavily on payments apps and other fintech technologies since the onset of the pandemic, but few are aware of how much control these apps have over consumer data, according to a recent survey released by The Clearing House Payments Co. In fact, consumer confidence in the …

Security professionals around the world equate ransomware attacks with terrorism, but they differ markedly from country to country in their willingness to play ball with the attackers. That’s according to survey results released Tuesday that gathered data from more than 1,500 security executives in the United States, the United Kingdom, …

Consumers have relied more heavily on payments apps and other fintech technologies since the onset of the pandemic, but few are aware of how much control these apps have over consumer data, according to a survey released Wednesday by The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC. In fact, consumer confidence in …

I’m closing my series on quantum computing and payments with an introduction of the underlying vision, pregnant with a bouquet of shining scenarios for a level playing field in cyber territory. Quantum computers are surprisingly non-deterministic in that they are governed by probability. The lottery they play on runs on …

As data compromises of various sorts continue to threaten the security of digital payments, the Accredited Standards Committee X9 Inc. this week issued a standard it says covers both data protection and breach notification. The new standard, “Financial and Personal Data Protection and Breach Notification,” also known as X9.141, is …

Quantum entities are fundamentally offensive to our experience and intuition. They are like a four-dimensional physical universe. We can’t imagine a world with length, width, and height plus a fourth dimension. But we can handle this notion mathematically. The same is true for quantum entities. The illustrious Richard Feynman, one …

The two big card networks are making preparations for big moves into cryptocurrency payments. But crypto is no stranger to fraud, so Mastercard Inc. on Thursday announced it is acquiring CipherTrace Inc., a 6-year-old company specializing in technology to combat money laundering and other crimes involving digital-currency transactions. The deal, …

When automotive vehicles came on the road, they were described as “fast horses.” When the transistor replaced the vacuum tube, it was described as a “smaller switch.” And now that quantum computers are in the offing, they are being described as “faster computing machines.” We know very well that the …