Hacker’s accessing improperly stored credit card data is one thing, but what if Target or Neiman Marcus had been storing customers’ biometric information instead? Merchants storing encrypted biometric data is among various security options talked about as a means to protect payment card data. In...
Intense competition from online and mobile channels, pricing pressures and shrinking margins, high fixed costs, changing customer demographics, and eroding revenue opportunities. Sound familiar? It should. It’s exactly what drove the newspaper industry into a death spiral about 20 years ago, and it’s what’s playing...
Several companies are exploring the idea of offering insurance on Bitcoin holdings. A central criticism of Bitcoin is that Bitcoin wallets are uninsured, not by the FDIC or a private entity. Among those looking to fill this market gap is Elliptic, a wallet service based...
A new study has determined that the iPhone 5s consumes the most data on average compared with a diverse selection of other smartphones. The study, led by JDSU, confirmed that the iPhone 5s, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S4, are responsible for a large...
Stripe, the maker of a merchant API for accepting credit card transactions, has been valued at $1.75 billion following a funding round. The company raised $80 million from a group of new and existing investors, Finextra reported on Jan. 22. Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Allen...
Paydiant, a provider of white-label mobile payments and other payment services, has received a patent from the U.S. patent and Trademark Office for a system that allows a user to conduct ATM transactions with their smartphone. The system works by scanning a QR code displayed...
MasterCard Advisors, a unit of MasterCard, has launched a business and spending analytics report in Hong Kong. SpendingPulse features a wide range of information relevant to the retail, banking, investment and governmental industries. “We’ve seen some steady growth in spending in recent months, which is...
Between 2001 and 2004, Target and Visa collaborated on a smart card project that ultimately fizzled due to costs and questions about the system’s viability and operational profitability. It was nearly a decade ago that the retailer canceled the smart card project because the company’s...
BlackPOS, the point-of-sale (POS)-targeting malware implicated in the most recent data-breach attack, has been discovered attacking at least six other U.S. retailers. While IntelCrawler, a cybersecurity firm, has not publicly named the companies, it identified them as retailers based in the United States, Reuters reported...
