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VeriFone Holdings Inc., a major terminal manufacturer, is entering the burgeoning business of card-data security with a product it says will secure cardholder information from the instant the card is swiped. The product, VeriShield Protect, was announced on Wednesday and encrypts mag-stripe data and the personal account number for the …
Read More »Discover Triples Its Acceptance Network with Diners Club Deal
Seemingly trapped in North America after shedding its money-losing British credit card operation in March, Discover Financial Services LLC suddenly is a global payments player with its pending deal to buy Diners Club International from Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank N.A. for $165 million in cash. The deal adds 8 million merchant …
Read More »Malware at Hannaford Raises More Questions About Data Security
Fraudsters planted so-called malware, or malicious software, on servers at about 300 supermarkets in or affiliated with the Hannaford Bros. Inc. supermarket chain and with it were able to steal credit and debit card data, according to a letter from a Hannaford attorney to Massachusetts officials. The thefts happened even …
Read More »For One Day, Cash Is King at Visa As Its IPO Soars
Visa Inc.'s current slogan is “Life Takes Visa,” but now it's “Wall Street Takes Visa.” After raising a record $17.3 billion late Tuesday by pricing its initial public offering of stock at $44 per share, above its target range of $37 to $42 per share, Visa's stock opened on the …
Read More »Pay By Touch Abruptly Shuts Down All Biometric Operations
Bankrupt Solidus Networks Inc., which does business under the Pay By Touch name, is ending all of its fingerprint-based biometrics operations effective late Wednesday, the company announced Wednesday afternoon. In a news release, the San Francisco-based firm said that at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time March 19, one second before midnight, …
Read More »Hannaford Bros. Was in Compliance with PCI When Hacked
Fraudsters obtained payment card data originating with Hannaford Bros. Co. while the regional supermarket chain was compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI. The disclosure may mark the first publicly known breach of a PCI-compliant merchant. “We were certified [as PCI-compliant] last spring and we were recertified …
Read More »Hannaford’s Big Breach Casts More Doubt on Data Security
News of the first big data breach of 2008 broke Monday afternoon when Scarborough, Maine-based grocery chain Hannaford Bros. Co. acknowledged a data intrusion into its computer network that resulted in the theft of a reported 4.2 million customer credit and debit card numbers. The disclosure came only after the …
Read More »Fraud Prevalence Levels off, But Incident Rate Increases
Companies that accept checks and electronic payments were victimized by fraud at virtually the same rate in 2007 as in 2006, but those that experienced fraud saw more incidents of it, according to a survey by the Association for Financial Professionals released this week. The Bethesda, Md.-based AFP is a …
Read More »Interchange Bill Raises Questions About Role of Government
A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives late last week that proposes to lay down new rules for how payment card interchange would be set raises many questions beyond whether the banking or retail lobby carries more clout in Congress. The questions can be summed up in one: …
Read More »Banks Must Recruit Consumers to Fight ID Fraud, Researcher Warns
Losses to identity fraud will be hard to reduce unless banks and other financial-services providers begin working harder to recruit consumers to look after their own accounts, a noted researcher said on Wednesday. “The important change that needs to happen today is a much stronger partnership between the person who …
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