Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
The bad news about payments risk just keeps on coming. The Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc. reported this week that phishing attacks reached an all-time high in 2016, totaling 1,220,523. That was up fully 65% over 2015, the group says in its latest quarterly report. Another way to look at the …
Read More »U.S. Chip Card Saturation Helps Bring Global EMV Growth Nearly to a Standstill
By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Big markets like the United States and China have been boosting EMV chip card shipments for years, but now those two growth engines are sputtering. Worldwide contactless EMV. Currently, most EMV cards in the U.S. market require users to insert the card into a chip reader …
Read More »Canadian Small Businesses To Get an Interchange Cut From Mastercard
Small merchants that belong to the 109,000-member Canadian Federation of Independent Business will get interchange reductions of 12.5% or more on Mastercard purchases beginning April 3 under a deal announced Thursday by the CFIB and Mastercard Inc. The new rates will be available to CFIB members through all Canadian merchant …
Read More »Eye On Data Breaches: InterContinental Hotels Confirms Breach; Target Settlement Re-Do?
By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews An investigation by hotel operator InterContinental Hotels Group PLC found malware had been installed on servers that processed payment cards at restaurants and bars in 12 IHG-managed properties, the company said. And a federal appellate court told a lower court to investigate whether the class of customers …
Read More »Visa’s Globetrotting New CEO Inherits a Solidly Profitable Company
By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews As the new chief executive of Visa Inc., a company that is still digesting its former European franchisee, Alfred Kelly has had a busy couple of months. Since taking charge from former CEO Charles W. Scharf in December, Kelly has stopped by 12 Visa offices globally, met …
Read More »Remote Fraud Set To Dethrone Counterfeiting
Counterfeiting is still the king of U.S. payment card fraud, according to the Federal Reserve’s recently released Payments Study 2016, but probably not for long thanks in part to the coming of EMV chip cards and the aftereffects of data breaches. Counterfeit fraud accounted for 44% of U.S. payment card …
Read More »Identity Fraud Climbs to an All-Time High As Card Fraud Rises ‘Across the Board’
By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Payments professionals who suspect fraud is getting significantly worse were confirmed in their suspicions Wednesday with a report indicating identity fraud hit an all-time high in 2016, affecting some 15.4 million U.S. consumers. That’s up nearly 18% from 2015 and represents a one-third increase from the …
Read More »Mastercard Expects To Continue Growing Despite Political Turbulence in the U.S.
Mastercard Inc.’s key operating and financial metrics all grew in the fourth quarter, and president and chief executive Ajay Banga on Tuesday said he expects them to continue growing despite the political turbulence created by President Donald Trump’s new administration. In the United States, total fourth-quarter credit and debit card …
Read More »More Than 400 Million Visa Cards Bear EMV Chips As U.S. EMV Acceptance Grows
The total number of Visa Inc. credit and debit cards bearing an EMV chip numbered 408.1 million at the end of December, Visa announced Thursday. That’s a 2.1% increase from the 399.9 million tally at the end of November. Of the total, 219.4 million are debit cards and 188.7 million …
Read More »Credit Cards Compromised in 19% of Data Breaches, Researchers Find
Credit card numbers were involved in just under one-fifth of the 4,000-plus data breaches worldwide reported in 2016, data-security services provider Risk Based Security Inc. reported Wednesday. RBS says the latest release of its annual Data Breach QuickView found that 4,149 data breaches occurred or became publicly known in 2016, …
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