News

March, 2014

• 27 March

  New Law Enforcement Tactic Could Snare ISOs and Acquirers in Quest To Catch Bad Merchants

    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 …
• 26 March

  Pulse Deal Gives Visa’s Common AID Nearly Universal Enablement for Chip Debit Transactions

  Discover Financial Service’s Pulse subsidiary last week became the latest debit network to license Visa Inc.’s so-called common application identifier (AID) on soon-to-be-issued Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip debit cards. This latest agreement means Visa’s common AID will be enabled on cards that account for nearly 90% of U.S. PIN-debit transactions. The …
• 26 March

  Merchant Warehouse’s Opticard Purchase Intended To Enhance Small Business Products

    Merchant Warehouse Inc. has bought gift and loyalty provider Opticard and has plans to offer its services as part of bundled transaction services to merchants. Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Opticard, which will continue to operate independently, sells gift and loyalty card services to small businesses. Merchants can use Opticard programs to …
• 26 March

  Target Clarifies Number of Consumers Affected by Breach, Claims Data Security Improving

  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 …
• 25 March

  Banks Sue Trustwave, Target’s PCI Services Provider Before the Retailer’s Data Breach

  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 …
• 24 March

  Sen. Durbin Decries Appellate Court’s ‘Giveaway’ to Banks; Merchants Mull Their Next Steps

  An appellate court’s Friday decision reinstating the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial interpretation of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment with its debit card interchange cap and transaction-routing requirements continues to draw fire, but whether the merchants and retail groups that brought the appeal and lost will trudge on in court remains …
• 21 March

  Appellate Court Upholds the Fed’s Rule Implementing the Durbin Amendment

  In an unsurprising ruling, a three-judge panel on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial rule implementing the Durbin Amendment’s debit card provisions in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act. A federal district judge last July overturned the rule, saying the Fed hadn’t followed Congress’s intent. Judges …
• 20 March

  Burger King Has Its Way With a New Mobile-Payments and Loyalty App

  It may perennially trail McDonald’s Corp. among the leading U.S. hamburger chains, but Burger King Worldwide Inc. is on track to take the lead in mobile payments. Miami-based Burger King this week said it plans to roll out a smart phone app offering mobile payments and digital-coupons beginning in April. …
• 20 March

  A Smart Phone in Hand Could Mean Cash in Pocket From an ATM

    Security and convenience-conscious consumers wielding smart phones may one day have a safer and easier way to get cash from ATMs. ATM maker Diebold Inc. is testing a cash-dispensing-only ATM that relies on a mobile wallet to authenticate the consumer, eschewing a PIN pad and card reader. The ATM, …
• 19 March

  Tokenization for E-Commerce Takes Key Step Forward with CardinalCommerce Patent

  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 …