Anti-Card Fraud Efforts Must Transcend PCI Compliance

Effective anti-payment card fraud efforts must go beyond compliance with PCI standards, according to Visa’s Ellen Richey. She notes best practices already exist that surpass technical PCI requirements, and they include guidelines and recommendations associated with the need for wider adoption of chip cards, tokenization, and point-to-point encryption. Richey also advocates limited storage of card…

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Hackers Increase Attacks on Big E-Commerce and Retail Sites

Cybercriminals are increasingly using phishing attack campaigns to target retailers and banks in countries such as China and India, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group’s (APWG) latest report covering phishing activity. APWG notes an increasingly large number of retailers who had not been targeted previously became the targets of phishing campaigns during the last half…

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Mobile Payment Groups Aim to Win Over U.K. Consumers

Tech firms, banks, and telecom operators are hoping to attract more U.K. mobile payers and shoppers using a wide variety of mobile payment options. Startup Klarna expects to have its service launched this summer with several British retailers, with the service featuring complex algorithms to check transactions for fraud. Pingit is a standalone app that…

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Biometrics Eyed for Secure Future Mobile Payments

Payment experts emphasized biometrics as a likely future payment authentication technology at the recent Biometrics Institute Asia Pacific Conference. Kiwibank’s Tony Eyles says biometrics offers a better experience for customers while also bolstering security, while the Australian Payments Clearing Association’s Arun Kendall expects older users to be more resistant to biometric security than others. Panelists…

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Cover App Designed to Ease Restaurant Payments

An new app from the startup Cover aims to ease electronic payments at restaurants through an integrated payment experience, according to Cover founder Andrew Cove. The diner notifies the server that he will be paying with Cover and gives his name, and the Cover app guesses the diner is at the same restaurant, which the…

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Mobile Payments in China Surge 255% in 2014 First Quarter

Mobile payments in China have risen 255 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2014 to $623 billion, according to a recent People’s Bank of China (PBOC) report. In addition, mobile payments grew 232 percent year-over-year leading up to the first quarter of 2014. The rising use of mobile payment is boosting the fortunes of…

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Mobile Payment Apps Increasingly Replacing Cash on Campus

Students at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) and many other college campuses are opting to use mobile payment applications rather than cash for all of their purchases. “It’s changed the way we go out,” says LMU student Dillon Siler. “Even interacting with friends. It just makes life a lot easier.” PayPal’s Venmo is one of more…

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Researchers Discover Critical Flaws in the Chip and PIN System

Cambridge University researchers have unearthed a pair of critical flaws in EMV smart card technology that can be exploited to generate cloned cards that are undetectable by normal bank procedures. The researchers found that some ATMs create poor random numbers that are easily predictable and could be leveraged to compute codes to authorize cash withdrawals.…

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U.S. Needs Real-Time Payments System

The U.S. must transition to an immediate payments system or risk the fragmentation of payments as consumers use digital alternatives such as Amazon and PayPal, says consultant Bruce J. Summers. He proposes a payments system model in which a narrow banking license is provided for digital payment providers to let them hold deposits for payments…

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POS Malware Advances Outpacing Efforts to Stop Them

Point-of-sale systems increasingly are being overcome by hackers’ expanding use of malware to compromise credit and debit card data, according to an Arbor Networks study. Although the study found that most types of malware lack sophistication and could be detected by watchful companies, in many public retail breach incidents attackers had access to the victim’s…

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