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Visa Inc. moved on Thursday to commercialize mobile payments using cloud-based near-field communication technology with its release of Visa Cloud Payment Solutions. A related development, the announcement of the upcoming debut of a tokenization service, is aimed at locking down cloud-based NFC and other digital payments. The new services include …
Read More »ACI To Expand Its Fraud-Protection Services Menu Through Its Acquisition of ReD
After beefing up its bill-payment services through two acquisitions in 2013, ACI Worldwide Inc. is now turning its attention to fraud prevention. The Naples, Fla.-based payments-software firm on Monday announced that it plans to buy prominent e-commerce fraud-detection and prevention services provider Retail Decisions Plc (ReD) for $205 million in …
Read More »PCI Council Puts Trustwave’s Payment-Software Assessment Practice ‘In Remediation’
The PCI Security Standards Council has placed Trustwave Holdings Inc.’s business of assessing payment-processing software for compliance with a major security standard “in remediation,” an official term that means probation. Chicago-based Trustwave is one of the biggest firms, if not the biggest, in the business of assessing merchants and processors …
Read More »PayPal Brushes off a ‘Challenging’ Period for Parent eBay, Posting Solid Gains
PayPal Inc. enjoyed a solid quarter of growth despite what eBay Inc. chief executive John Donahoe characterized Wednesday as a “challenging” first half. One of the biggest of these challenges, according to Donahoe, was a data breach that occurred in late February or early March and that led PayPal parent …
Read More »Federal Officials Tell Their Side of the Operation Choke Point Story
They came in for more bashing at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday, but several federal government officials at least got a chance to give their opinions about the controversial Operation Choke Point, an effort by the U.S. Department of Justice supported by bank regulators that aims to cut off access …
Read More »Countering Operation Choke Point, Acquirers Canceled 10,000 Fraudulent Merchants
Seeking to contrast the merchant-acquiring industry’s actual practices with the impression created by the government’s Operation Choke Point that acquirers turn a blind eye to shady merchants, the industry’s leading trade group on Monday said its members last year discharged more than 10,000 merchants for fraud. That statistic comes from …
Read More »Eye on Management: Leadership Change at the PCI Council; Roam Data’s Paull Leaves
The PCI Security Standards Council has hired a former MasterCard Inc. executive as its new general manager to replace the retiring Bob Russo, and point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico S.A.’s mobile-payment subsidiary Roam Data has a new leader. Russo, who became the PCI Council’s first general manager in March 2007,about six …
Read More »Bill Would Put a Chokehold on the Justice Department’s Operation Choke Point
The U.S. Department of Justice’s controversial Operation Choke Point, an effort to cut off high-risk merchants’ access to electronic payments by challenging the banks and processors that serve them, continues to draw fire. The latest missile comes in the form of a bill from U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., who …
Read More »Not Content Targeting Financial Services, Phishers Widen Attacks to New Brands
Online fraudsters are attacking a much wider variety of brands, including grocery stores and Bitcoin exchanges, showing a growing level of sophistication in their efforts to gull unsuspecting customers out of their money, according to the latest quarterly report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc., an 11-year-old organization made up …
Read More »Retailer Confidence in Detecting Data-Security Breaches Abounds, But Is It Warranted?
Retailers have a hearty sense of confidence when it comes to how quickly their organizations would detect a data breach, especially one that targets sensitive payment information, finds a survey from Tripwire Inc., a data-security company. In the survey of 154 retail organizations, 60% said their systems could detect a …
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