Fraud & Security

A federal judge has ordered the two main perpetrators of what the Federal Trade Commission calls the “massive Pointbreak Media robocall scheme,” part of which involved remotely created checks, to pay $3.37 million to the FTC, the agency announced this week. U.S. District Court Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga in Miami …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it will buy InstaMed, a specialist in health-care payments. Terms were not disclosed. In April, InstaMed released an app with a blockchain prototype that it said will demonstrate how the technology can support adjudication and payment for insurance claims, patient billing, and patient payment. NLS …

Boomtown Inc., which provides merchant-support services, raised $12 million in funding led by Telstra Ventures with others participating. The Series B funding will go toward building its Relay Software-as-a-Service platform and additional growth. Boomtown also announced that Robert H.B. Baldwin Jr., a member of the Global Payments Inc. board of …

Processor Adyen N.V. said ride-share service Uber will use Adyen’s 3-D Secure service online and in-app. 3-D Secure is an online authentication standard that, now in its second iteration, uses multiple bits of data to verify elements of a transaction. Unlike the first version, 3-D Secure 2 aims to be …

An automated clearing house network rule tightening security around Internet purchases, one of the ACH’s fastest-growing transaction categories, is set to take effect Jan. 1. The rule change, technically an amendment, affects so-called WEB debits, which cover a wide variety of ACH-funded Internet payments. It will require merchants as ACH …

NACHA said automated clearing house volume in the first quarter totaled 6 billion payments that included 3.5 billion debit transactions and 2.5 billion credit transactions. Internet-initiated payments increased 10.3% to 1.6 billion. Same-day ACH transactions totaled 52.7 million, up 24% from a year prior. NACHA also launched the NACHA Corporate …

First Data Corp. launched CloverAchievers, a grant program for small-business owners that offers recipients a cash grant, Clover point-of-sale equipment, and a charitable donation in their names. Bank of America Merchant Services said it and subscription-management specialist Recurly are working together on products for merchants. Fraud-prevention firm ACH Alert named …

Facebook Inc. reportedly is planning a cryptocurrency-based payment system using a digital coin with stable value that would enable the social-networking giant to avoid fees it incurs for conventional card payments, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal cited by the Associated Press. The report says Facebook is …

PayPal Holdings Inc. said the United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority provisionally cleared PayPal’s $2.2 billion deal to buy iZettle AB, a European point-of-sale services provider. The deal closed in 2018. Processor First Data Corp. said merchant-processing revenues from North American clients rose 5% year-over-year in the first quarter to …

In the race to attract and retain today’s always-on, mobile-savvy consumer, most companies are developing their own e-commerce apps at a fast and furious pace. But small glitches, and even major mishaps, can occur when app testing is rushed or overlooked altogether, leading to unhappy consumers, lost sales, and a …