Analytics

Credit bureaus and payment companies are testing ways to use social media – say, a Facebook Inc. post about a recently purchased Corvette – to verify a person’s identity and even assess consumer creditworthiness.

In an interview this week, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of Fincen, said the government was not trying to squash the development of digital currencies, but made it clear they must follow proper anti-money laundering procedures like other financial institutions.

Visa issuers have put 3.5 million chip-based smart cards in the hands of U.S. consumers since the card brand announced its EMV-card migration roadmap in August of 2011, a Visa executive says.

Chase Paymentech Europe, a merchant acquiring and processing subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase, has introduced a new service designed to lighten the security burden for European online merchants.

New consumer borrowing reached a five-year high in the first two months of the year, with new credit up more than 33% from 2010 lows, according to credit reporting agency Equifax.

ControlScan is providing online payments security for ConvergenceHealth's digital- and cloud-based healthcare software and services.

Many merchants are still wary about accepting bitcoins, but new vendor partnerships and a maturation of the companies that handle bitcoin exchanges address some of the virtual currency's riskier aspects.

Consumer spending is expected to accelerate this year, while government spending declines at a faster rate, according to the results of a late-April survey of 49 business economists.

The timing couldn’t be better for the new advisory board of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to include several European voices.

US Merchant Systems, an ISO with 100,000 retail locations, is providing data analytics to customers through Womply Insights.

TransUnion has developed a risk assessment model to help auto lenders evaluate the potential for future loan delinquency based on the history of the vehicle used as collateral.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a court order to the alternative payment provider Dwolla to cease operations with Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, which it accuses of operating as an unlicensed money transmitter.

Tyfone Inc. is taking smart-card security beyond plastic payment cards with a plan to apply the technology to mobile devices and personal computers.

Prepaid cards have been at the heart of several data breaches in recent years because their traits can make them easier for fraudsters to exploit.

Simon Haslam is becoming president and CEO of Elavon at a time of extreme stress for payments processors, which face nimble competitors, new payment standards and high-profile security risks.

The identities of the card processing companies whose systems were breached in a massive cyber offensive have surfaced.

Foreclosure activity dropped in April to the lowest level in more than six years, another sign the recovery in the housing market is on track, a report from RealtyTrac showed on Thursday.

NorsePayments wants to make it harder for card thieves to perform fraudulent card-not-present transactions.

A massive cyber offensive in which millions of dollars were stolen from two Middle Eastern banks through ATMs in dozens of countries could have been prevented had better security controls been in place at the card processors, the ATMs and the banks involved, observers say. The security lapses could lead to legal liability for many of the companies duped in the process.

Facebook Connect is an increasingly prevalent way for Internet users to skip registration for other websites by using their Facebook credentials instead — and to WePay, it's also a tool for fighting payment fraud.