Fraud & Security

Recognizing there is no one-one-size-fits-all approach to data security, the PCI Security Standards Council continues to evolve its requirements toward a goal of greater flexibility for payments providers. The new approach comes as the Council contemplates a new version of its core security standard. Gathering in Vancouver, B.C., this week …

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became enforceable on May 28, 2018, in the European Union (EU). Now, almost a year and a half later, things seem to be getting a bit more real as companies like British Airways and Marriott International are being hit with substantial fines and the Information …

Global Payments Inc. completed its $21.5 billion all-stock merger with payment processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS). The deal cleared its last major hurdle when European Union antitrust regulators said they had no competition concerns, Reuters reported Tuesday. The merged company serves 3.5 million merchant locations and 1,300 financial institutions in more than 100 …

Turnkey Risk Solutions, a risk-management firm specializing in first-party fraud, rebranded as Humaitrix LLC. Payments veterans John J. Leehy III joined the company as chief executive and Gregory W. Sahrmann joined as the chief operating officer. Amy Walraven, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. risk executive, is founder, president, and chief …

Corporate treasurers can identify numerous use cases for real-time or otherwise faster payments, but they do worry about transaction security, according to the Association for Financial Professionals. Some 60% of respondents surveyed in the AFP’s newly released 2019 payments study said business-to-business transactions will benefit the most from faster and …

With card-based transit payments picking up steam in the United States, a key Mastercard Inc. executive said Thursday that 22% of the network’s physical-world transactions globally were contactless as of the end of 2018. The time to complete a contactless transaction is down to 0.4 seconds, added Ajay Bhalla, president …

United Merchant Services Inc. said it acquired the rights to Royal Western Computer’s assets, including its point-of-sale software for dry cleaning merchants, branding, trademarks, licensee database, and sales channels. Royal Western Computer holds more than 25% of the dry cleaning POS market, UMS said. The company intends to expand by combining …

Cyber criminals took no time off in the first six months of 2019 as human-initiated attacks against online sites grew by 13% from the same period a year ago, finds the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Cybercrime Report released Tuesday. Bots, too, evolved to target new account creations. Bot attacks targeting new …

Five years ago, Apple Inc. laid claim to offering one of the first smart phone-based mobile-payment services, and now some observers say Apple Pay, with an estimated 43% of iPhone owners using the service, may be poised to score a breakthrough. Apple Pay was announced with great fanfare Sept. 9, …

Cyber threat intelligence provider Check Point Research disclosed this week what it says is a flaw in some Android smart phones that enables hackers to send bogus messages that trick users into entering malicious settings that could, among other things, route traffic through a proxy server controlled by the hacker. …