Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
The funk at VeriFone Systems Inc. continued late Wednesday when the leading point-of-sale terminal maker said revenues and profits for its first quarter of fiscal 2013 ended Jan. 31 would come in far short of earlier predictions. The downward forecast triggered a selloff in VeriFone’s shares, whose price was …
February, 2013
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21 February
Security Firms Start to Respond to Online Fraud Fears Triggered by Arrival of Chip Cards
With the United States playing catch-up with Canada and much of Europe in deploying chip card technology, security firms are starting to respond to online operators’ fears that the arrival of chips at the point of sale will drive fraud to the Internet. One of the latest of these …
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20 February
Pulse’s Tie to Acculynk Furthers Trend Toward EFT-Based P2P Services
The effort to harness debit card networks for near-instant person-to-person payments is moving apace. The latest development is this week’s announcement that the Houston-based Pulse electronic funds transfer network has enabled a service that will let cardholders pay each other by entering their debit card PINs on a so-called …
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20 February
Identity Fraud Rises for the Second Year in a Row, New Study Finds
While still down from high levels in 2009, identity fraud rose for the second straight year in 2012, according to the latest annual ID-fraud study from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin estimates that 5.26% of U.S. consumers were ID-fraud victims last year, up from 4.90% in 2011 and the recent …
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20 February
Cold Comfort in Reduced Phishing Activity, Warns Anti-Phishing Working Group
n The report, which covers the third quarter of last year, documents a steady decline in both the number of unique sites hosting phishing attacks and the volume of reported attacks. The number of phishing sites detected by the APWG fell in step-like fashion from 63,253 in April to …
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19 February
TSYS Plans To Go Big-Time in Prepaid With Its $1.4 Billion NetSpend Acquisition
No stranger to prepaid cards, payment card processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) will become a major force in the prepaid niche with its planned cash acquisition of program manager NetSpend Holdings Inc. that values NetSpend at $1.4 billion. The deal the two companies announced late Tuesday would pay NetSpend …
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14 February
PCI Council Releases Mobile-Acceptance Guidance, But No Word on Certification of Apps
The PCI Security Standards Council on Thursday released yet another set of data-protection guidelines for mobile payments, this one aimed at merchants using smart phones and tablet computers to accept credit and debit cards. Although it touches on many points, the guidance especially focuses on the software running on …
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13 February
PCI Council: Merchants Need To Be Grounded When Mulling Cloud-Based Data Security
Merchants that think by hiring a cloud-based provider to handle their payment card security tasks they’ll never have to worry again about protecting card data had better think twice, according to the PCI Security Standards Council. “Just because people outsource to a cloud service provider, they’re not done,” says …
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12 February
A Startup Emerges to Replace Passwords With a Wide Menu of Alternative Identifiers
Aiming to resolve a vexing security problem presented by user names and passwords, Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup Nok Nok Labs launched on Tuesday with $15 million in financing. Next month, Nok Nok will start shipping software that will allow users of PCs and mobile devices to identify themselves to …
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12 February
Criminals Are Increasingly Targeting E-Commerce And Mobile Devices, Study Finds
Fraudsters are turning their attention to e-commerce sites, continuing to improve the malware they use to find and harvest payment card data, and sensing opportunity in mobile devices, according to the latest annual data-breach report by Trustwave Holdings Inc. Chicago-based Trustwave, a leading data-forensics investigator and security vendor, based …