Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• PayPal Holdings Inc. no longer will provide purchase protection for transactions made on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, potentially dealing a blow to the nascent crowdfunding industry, CNBC reported.
• In a letter to Green Dot Corp. shareholders, Harvest Capital Strategies, which owns 9.3% of Green Dot, said it “condemns Green Dot for launching an exceedingly unprofessional and desperate smear campaign” against Harvest’s three director nominees. Harvest is engaged in a proxy fight with the prepaid card provider’s board of directors and seeks to oust CEO Steve Streit. Green Dot’s annual shareholder meeting is May 23.
• Merchant processor JetPay Corp. named merchant-acquiring industry veteran Diane (Vogt) Faro, a member of the company’s board of directors, as CEO, replacing Bipin C. Shah, who will continue in his role as chairman. Faro is a former First Data Corp. executive and president of the Electronic Transactions Association.
• MasterCard Inc. announced new acceptors of its MasterPass digital-payments service, including Saks Fifth Avenue and merchant processor North American Bancard’s NAB Velocity payments platform.
• Skimmers installed on point-of-sale equipment at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. location in Fredericksburg, Va., enabled fraudsters to steal payment card data and make ATM cash withdrawals; 37 members of a local credit union had their debit cards compromised, police said.
• A Troy, Mich., investment firm was the victim of a $495,000 theft when an employee, responding to what appeared to be a legitimate email request from a company executive, transferred that amount to a Hong Kong bank; the company determined eight days later that the email was fraudulent. A recent study claimed that such “spear phishing” fraud is rising.
