Fraud & Security

Grocer Whole Foods Market, now a unit of Amazon.com Inc., said it is investigating a breach of the point-of-sale software used in its taprooms and full-service restaurants in some of its stores. Whole Foods did not say how many locations or how many cards are affected. It said the payment system for the …

Add Sonic Drive-In to the roster of merchants that have experienced a breach of their payments systems. The Oklahoma City-based fast-food chain confirmed to Digital Transaction News that it has been investigating the incident. On Tuesday, security blog KrebsOnSecurity.com reported the breach affecting an unknown number of Sonic’s point-of-sale systems. …

Fraud-related expenses for merchants are rising as a percentage of revenues, and merchants now spend 10 times as much preventing fraud as they lose to chargebacks, according to new findings from Javelin Strategy & Research. Pleasanton, Calif.-based Javelin says its June study of 497 e-commerce merchants found that merchants in …

Payment-security technology provider Gemalto NV reported Wednesday that, around the world, some 1.9 billion records were compromised by data breaches in 2017’s first half, up 164% from 721 million records compromised in the last six months of 2016. The outlook for 2017’s second half is grim in light of the …

Risk-management firm ThreatMetrix Inc. said its ThreatMetrix ID product, announced this week, uses unique, anonymized customer data to help businesses make decisions about trust and identity. The product, hailed as the company’s flagship, incorporates four central capabilities. One is the unique, anonymous data it has on 1.4 billion users in …

A large portion of Apple Inc.’s customers spurn facial biometrics, a key security element in Apple’s new iPhone X, according to new research. Survey results from United Kingdom-based Juniper Research say that more than 40% of users of Apple’s mobile devices in the U.S. consider themselves unlikely to use facial …

As more consumers make more digital payments, financial institutions and merchants face an increasingly complex challenge to better authenticate these transactions. That requires looking at ways to keep pace with criminals and staying in step with consumers, says Aite Group LLC in its latest report, “Digital Authentication: New Opportunities to …

In anticipation of an upcoming PCI Security Standards Council specification for enabling PIN-on-glass transactions with consumer mobile devices, MagicCube released MC-Screen Shield, a back-end technology to help secure the PIN. PIN-on-glass technology—in which the PIN is entered via a display instead of using a dedicated PIN pad—has been available for …

Last week’s disclosure that hackers had accessed up to 143 million credit records at Equifax Inc. has stirred fears of a tsunami of fraud in coming months. But physical and online merchants are already struggling not only with a huge threat of fraud, but with a stunning fraud cost that …

In the hours after credit-reporting giant Equifax Inc. disclosed a massive data breach, consumers and businesses were left scrambling Friday to piece together the implications. But a range of consequences could affect Equifax itself as the Atlanta-based company struggles to recover from an epic hack that affected potentially 143 million …