Saturday , April 20, 2024

3.1 Million Merchants Accept Chip Cards and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 8/29/18

  • In its latest update about the U.S. conversion from magnetic-stripe to EMV chip cards, Visa Inc. said more than 3.1 million merchant locations accepted chip cards as of June versus only 392,000 in September 2015. The number of Visa chip cards increased 214% in that time to 499.7 million. Some 97% of June’s payment volume was on EMV cards. Counterfeit fraud losses are down 75% for merchants who have completed their chip-card acceptance upgrades, and are down 46% overall, Visa said.
  • Splitit, an installment-payment option offered by merchants, introduced features that allow users to spread payments across multiple credit and debit cards and to defer payments for up to 90 days.
  • KomBea, which provides call-center compliance services, launched SecureCall, which helps collect sensitive information, such as payment card details, over the phone without requiring consumers to reveal the data to call-center staff.
  • KrebsOnSecurity reported that a security researcher discovered a flaw in processor Fiserv Inc.’s Web platform that could have exposed personal and financial information about customers of an undetermined number of Fiserv bank and credit-union clients. Fiserv patched the flaw after being alerted by the news service.
  • Square Inc. has been awarded a patent on a system that would allow merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments, apparently through the company’s Cash App, which last year began allowing users to buy and sell Bitcoin. Point-of-sale payments would be translated into the currency preferred by the merchant, according to the patent. The patent, from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, is number 10,055,715.
  • As of mid-morning Wednesday, Bitcoin was trading at $7,088, topping the $7,000 level for the first time since Aug. 7.
  • NCR Corp. appointed Andre Fernandez as chief financial officer to replace CFO Bob Fishman, who is retiring. Fernandez most recently was president and chief executive of CBS Radio and earlier was CFO at Journal Communications. He also worked for 12 years at General Electric Co., where he was CFO for several business units in multiple countries.

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