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...
Visa reportedly issued warnings twice in 2013 to retailers, including Target, that a point-of-sale (POS) malware attack was a serious threat. The revelation suggests that Target and others impacted by the data breach did not take adequate steps to protect themselves once the warning was...
By Gloria Colgan, Managing Director, Market Platform Dynamics (@gkcolgan) Ah, the challenges of commercial prepaid. When JPMorgan Chase recently announced the potential sale of its government and commercial prepaid card business, it made big headlines. Chase has a massive portfolio from a prepaid perspective –...
Factoring, in which a supplier sells an invoice to a financer to be paid less than the invoice's value immediately, all but dried up as a financing source for small apparel manufacturers in the wake of the recession. But it appears to be making a...
Citing a lack of interest among both consumers and retailers, Swedbank is pulling the plug on its mobile-payments service, Bart. Despite a few high-profile domestic merchants that signed up for the service, Swedbank failed to generate enough interest to make the venture profitable, Finextra reported...
By Jeffrey Green (@epaymentsguy) Much has been said, especially in trade press, over the past year or so about Microsoft’s decision to discontinue updating its Windows XP operating system, effective April 8. In making that decision, users of ATMs and point-of-sale terminals and systems, many...
By: Eileen Goode (@eileengoode) Legalized for medical consumption in 20 states and for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, marijuana is still federally classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic. And federal rules prohibit federal banks and credit card companies from processing pot-related transactions. As such,...
