Fraud & Security

The Facebook-led announcement of the Libra cryptocurrency is evoking blowback both in the United States and overseas. House Financial Services Committee chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) called for Facebook to halt the planned launch of Libra until Congress has had a chance to hold hearings on the cryptocurrency. Elsewhere, the governor …

Facebook Inc. is expected to release details this week, perhaps as early as Tuesday, on its Libra cryptocurrency initiative, but for now what’s known about the project has at least some experts shaking their heads. “Why a cryptocurrency, and why Facebook?” asks Tim Sloane, who follows digital currencies as vice …

Target Corp. was hit by two point-of-sale glitches this past weekend. On Sunday afternoon the retailer was unable to process certain card transactions at some of its 1,800 stores for about 90 minutes due to an issue at a data center of its payment-services vendor, NCR Corp., Reuters reported. Sunday’s …

FirstBank, one of the largest privately held financial institutions in the United States, said it has committed to using the Real Time Payments network from The Clearing House Payments Co. Glint Pay Ltd., a startup that lets people make purchases on a debit Mastercard backed by gold, announced a $6.4 …

A common assumption among merchant acquirers and retailers is that merchants are the ones who ultimately are liable for network fines after a merchant’s data breach. But a recent decision by a federal appellate court that ruled against First Data Corp., the nation’s largest payment processor, sends a message that …

Retail loss-prevention executives say fraud is increasing the most inside stores, but nearly a third say fraud is rising the most in online-only sales and more than 20% say it’s going up the most in multi-channel sales. The findings come from the Washington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation’s newly released National …

The news that the major payment card networks will implement a standardized buy button later this year may have stirred hopes among issuers, merchants, and acquirers that the longstanding problems of rising e-commerce fraud and inconsistent checkout flows will finally be addressed. But already cautionary notes are emerging to indicate …

Step Mobile Inc., a startup financial-services firm focusing on teens, raised $22.5 million in a Series A funding round led by payment processor Stripe Inc. Nearly 51% of retailers surveyed for the latest annual loss-prevention and security report from the National Retail Federation said risks and threats from return fraud, …

The news this week that Square Inc. had misdirected consumers’ digital receipts to the wrong people has prompted some observers to point to new authentication technology as a solution. An emerging option some are zeroing in on is Apple Inc.’s Sign in with Apple, which the company unveiled Monday and …

A data-security services firm says it has spotted approximately 200,000 payment card numbers in online fraudster marketplaces stolen from a collections firm serving diagnostic laboratories, but it expects more to come up for sale later. Secaucus, N.J.-based Quest Diagnostics Inc. reported Monday that financial and other data on some 11.9 …