Law and Regulation

Data breaches remained at near record levels in 2022, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s annual data breach report. The number of breaches totaled 1,802 last year, just 60 short of the all-time high recorded in 2021, making the total number of breaches in 2022 the second-highest on record. …

The Digital Dollar Project early Wednesday issued recommendations that include bigger investments by the federal government in researching a tokenized digital dollar. The group also called on the United States to exert leadership internationally in setting global standards for government-issued digital currencies even if the U.S. itself ultimately refrains from …

Oracle Corp. said restaurant chain Big Boy Restaurant Group LLC will adopt its Micros Simphony Cloud Point of Sale and Oracle Payment Cloud Service. Payments provider Paysafe Ltd. said it has expanded its processing services to sports betting in Ohio. The move follows on the heels of Paysafe’s entry in the Maryland sports-betting …

Point-of-sale system maker Lightspeed Commerce Inc. said it will reorganize as it contends with a shifting economy. Among its actions are the elimination of 300 jobs, accounting for approximately 10% of its overall employees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering regulations governing the fees providers charge for cross-border money wires, according to The Wall …

Newtek Business Services Corp., a provider of loans, merchant processing, and other services for small businesses, has completed its acquisition of National Bank of New York City. The acquisition agreement, which Newtek entered into in 2021, was subject to approval by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The …

When the Federal Trade Commission announced two days before Christmas it had leveled a preliminary consent order against Mastercard Inc. to correct what the agency saw as roadblocks the card company had erected against routing online debit transactions to competing networks, the move may have surprised at least some observers. …

Identity theft is a national scourge, but initial research findings released early Wednesday indicate that scourge impacts Black victims far more than it does other segments of the U.S. population. The impact can be measured by the dollar losses ID theft victims suffer, according to the report. In one example …

The number of cryptocurrency hacks globally reached 190 last year, setting a new annual record and exceeding 2021’s total by 44%, according to Comparitech. The value stolen totaled $3.57 billion, exceeding the combined total for 2019, 2020, and 2021. Some 82% of senders of remittances across borders said the cost of living has risen …

U.S. retail sales in the Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 period, excluding automotive, grew 7.6% compared to the same time in 2021, according to Mastercard Inc.’s SpendingPulse, which tracks in-store and online sales. E-commerce sales alone were up 10.6%. The calculation took account of all forms of payment but was not …

Some 12% of U.S. customers have lost money to fraud on a peer-to-peer payment network, while 11% have seen it happen to a family member, according to survey results released earlier this month by J.D. Power. The networks cited by the respondents were Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal. For the survey, …