Fraud & Security

Some 43% of businesses report they were exposed to card fraud in 2013, a whopping rise of 14 percentage points from 2012, according to the latest annual fraud survey from the Association of Financial Professionals. Nonetheless, survey respondents are remarkably optimistic about the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard, with 92% …

Two banks that sued Target Corp. and data-security services provider Trustwave Holdings Inc. in the wake of Target’s massive data breach have withdrawn their federal lawsuit after filing it only a week ago, leaving payments-industry observers wondering why they brought the action in the first place. In separate motions filed …

By Linda Punch Those looking for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to give Bitcoin legitimacy as a currency when the agency issued its guidance earlier this week were sorely disappointed. The IRS said the digital cash will be taxed like property, not currency. But the quest for legitimacy may be …

  A historical shift in how some federal financial law-enforcement agencies view the payments industry is under way, and it’s not one that bodes well for the industry, Jason Oxman, chief executive of the Electronic Transactions Association, told attendees at the Southeast Acquirers Association conference this week in Atlanta. Dubbed …

Target Corp. told a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that the overlap in the number of consumers affected by the two-headed monster of its data breach may be 12 million or more. The nation’s No. 2 general retailer also said it is improving its data security in the wake of the …

Trustwave Holdings Inc., the leading provider of Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) services to merchants, on Monday became the target of a lawsuit arising from the massive data breach at Target Corp. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago by two banks, claims negligence on the part …

At a time when both banks and retailers are reeling from a rash of payment-data breaches, a technology company that has developed a system some believe could stop these breeches has announced that it has secured new patent protection for its technology. Mentor, Ohio-based CardinalCommerce Corp. said this week it …

The J.M. Smucker Co.’s online store is expected to reopen next week, nearly a month after the jam-and-jelly producer closed it after discovering that hackers had broken into its computer system and stolen payment card data and other personal information on up to 23,000 customers. In other data-security news, beauty …

The coming of Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to the U.S. has many American merchants worried about the inevitable shift of credit and debit card fraud from the point of sale to online channels. EMV cards, while highly effective in thwarting counterfeiting and related card-present fraud, offer no more fraud protection …

In the wake of high-profile retailer data breaches and mounting political pressure to address security flaws in the nation’s payment card system, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. on Friday said they were forming a “cross-industry group” to enhance payment security. The leading card networks said in a joint news release …