Fraud & Security

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews No bones about it, adding EMV payment card acceptance to point-of-sale systems has been a challenge for retailers. Seventy-six percent of them, in the inaugural “State of Retail Payments 2016” study, said EMV implementation was their top challenge in the past 12 months. Other top challenges from …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews Partly because of a big increase in skimming, debit card fraud rates jumped in 2015 on both signature and PIN-based point-of-sale transactions, according to the 2016 Debit Issuer Study commissioned by Discover Financial Services’ Pulse electronic funds transfer network. The overall fraud-loss rate on PIN POS transactions …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Chargebacks cost issuers millions every year just to investigate, let alone process, so technology companies see an opportunity in reversing the rising tide of cardholder inquiries financial institutions and merchants confront every day. The latest example is a service from financial-data aggregator Yodlee that adds information …

• The U.S. Marshals Service announced that bidder registration began today for its Aug. 22 online auction of 2,719.33 Bitcoins forfeited to the government in various criminal, civil, and administrative cases. The Bitcoins, which will be sold in one block, are worth nearly $1.61 million at today’s price of $590.25 …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews The notion of the federal government auctioning off Bitcoin seized in drug busts and other actions looks like it’s an idea with some staying power. The U.S. Marshals Service on Monday scheduled yet another auction of the virtual currency in the wake of the four it conducted …

• Prepaid card provider Green Dot Corp. reported that second-quarter net income more than doubled from a year earlier to $7.78 million on a 2% increase in operating revenues to $173.5 million. While Green Dot’s active card count of 4.28 million was down 11% from a year earlier, purchase volume …

Implementing so-called chip-and-PIN authentication for U.S. credit cards would cost merchants and card issuers more than $7 billion but prevent only about $850 million in lost-and-stolen card fraud over five years, a new report from Aite Group LLC says. The report, “Chip Cards in the United States: The PIN, PINless, …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews A relatively new program geared at shoring up data security at small merchants is making progress toward a crucial January deadline, but not without some full-throated grumbling, if comments and questions at an industry trade show this week in Grapevine, Texas, were any indication. The program, …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Criminals stepped up their attacks on e-commerce sites in the second quarter, producing more than 69 million rejected transactions, a stunning 90% increase from the same quarter a year ago, according to the Q2 2016 Cybercrime report recently released by ThreatMetrix. Of these transactions, 23% were payments, …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Most mobile wallets in North America have struggled to win adoption and usage among consumers, and some apps backed by mobile networks have already fallen by the wayside. But one factor that could promote mobile payments is likely to come from a surprising source: restaurants. With …