Credit Cards

  Loop, a mobile wallet that uses a case or fob to generate its own contactless field to communicate with many payment terminals, has launched for the latest iPhone models. The brainchild of payments veterans George Wallner, founder of point-of-sale terminal maker Hypercom Corp., now Equinox Payments LLC, and Will …

A form of near-field communication that does not require a secure element to complete a mobile payment now has the formal backing of card brands MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. Each of them announced today their respective contactless payment schemes support so-called host card emulation. Host card emulation got a …

The gradual lowering of barriers that have kept legal marijuana merchants outside of the financial mainstream gained momentum Friday in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) and the U.S. Department of Justice announced new guidelines that signal federal approval for banks to serve legal marijuana …

With Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. digging in their heels on a key chip card deadline, payments executives are expressing doubts that all U.S. small businesses will be ready. “The short answer is no,” says Henry Helgeson, chief executive of Merchant Warehouse, a Boston-based merchant processor. “We still have a …

A new contactless payment scheme available from On Track Innovations Ltd. enables consumers to pay for fuel at the pump without removing their payment card from their wallets. n Currently, EasyFuel Plus is available in Europe and other international locations. OTI says plans to market it in the United States …

Close to 60% of ISOs and other processors are reporting compliance rates of 40% or better among their portfolios of so-called Level 4 merchants, up about five percentage points from a year ago, according to a survey released by Atlanta-based security-solutions vendor ControlScan Inc. and the Merchant Acquirers’ Committee, a …

Target Corp. said on Tuesday that it passed its latest Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) inspection a mere three months before confirming in December that a data breach compromised 40 million customers’ payment card numbers. Target also said it is fast-tracking its efforts to roll out chip card acceptance …

Merchants and financial institutions will find their information-protection practices under intense scrutiny this week in Washington, where no fewer than four Senate and House of Representatives hearings are scheduled in the wake of payment card data breaches at Target Corp., Neiman Marcus Group and other merchants. The sessions kick off …

In the wake of the recently discovered data breaches at major merchants like Target Corp., Neiman Marcus Group, and Michaels Stores, much of the talk in the payments industry has focused on whether more advanced card technology, like chip cards, might have mitigated the risk of fraud. But one ambitious …

  With 20 months to go until a major liability shift associated with the migration of the U.S. payment system to chip card, independent sales organizations and acquirers should not wait to get themselves and their merchants ready for the October 2015 deadline, advised Leland S. Englebardt, group head of …