Analytics

A café chain in northern New England is telling its customers that hackers may have breached the company’s payments system. The Works Bakery Café is a small target but its experience is indicative of a bigger trend in data security.

The Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) and Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) standards don't appear to have a lot in common, but there is one alarming similarity — the tortoise-like pace of migration which threatens deadlines for both.

TransUnion's quarterly analysis of Canadian credit trends found that the average consumer's total debt (excluding mortgage) increased nearly 6% from $25,960 at the end of 2011 to $27,485 in Q4 2012.

Loss mitigation strategies for the payments business are getting a technology makeover that includes the same kind of emerging analysis used to attract consumers in the first place.

Gallup's self-reported consumer spending measure showed encouraging signs in January, with consumers reporting daily spending averages similar to December's four-year high.

Foreclosure activity last year decreased from 2010 - when foreclosures peaked in most markets - in 181 out of the 212 markets tracked in the report, according to RealtyTrac.

Data security provider iovation Inc. has released two-factor phone authentication software it says will provide extra protection for consumers making online purchases.

Consumers Union, the public policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, called on federal regulators Wednesday to "protect vulnerable consumers from abusive debt collection practices."

The council announced Jan. 31 its guidelines for e-commerce data safety. The information is a result of research completed by the council's e-commerce security special interest group.

Consumer confidence dropped in January to its lowest mark in more than a year, a result of higher Social Security taxes that left Americans with less take-home pay, according to The Conference Board.

More than half of student loan accounts are in deferred status, where the repayment of the principal and interest of the loan is temporarily delayed, according to a TransUnion study.

Fraud losses on U.S. credit and debit cards, after years of decline, now appear to be on the rise again. And one key culprit, according to experts, is this country's slow adoption of technology that will improve security.

NetAuthority Inc.’s upgraded fraud prevention services include advanced encryption modules and software that allows banks and health-care facilities to more easily deploy them.

A computer hacker from the online activism group “Anonymous” was sentenced in Britain to 18 months in jail for conspiring to attack the websites of Visa Inc., PayPal Inc., MasterCard Inc. and others.

Synqera is trying to set itself apart from rivals in the targeted-offer crowd by using point-of-sale hardware with data collection tools that look at everything from weather patterns to the shopper's mood.

Mobile apps and personal financial management sites that attempt to analyze consumer’s spending habits and draw forecasts and conclusions about what the consumer should be doing pose risks, one expert says.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed more than 134,000 foreclosure prevention actions in the third quarter ended Sept. 30.

HSBC Holdings on Monday named a former auditor of the bank as its new head of global regulatory compliance, the latest move by the bank to bolster its compliance functions.

Fiserv Inc. has stuck to the same philosophy it had when it formed the EFT Solutions Risk Office three years ago: card-data security isn't an arms race - it's a battle of wits.

Cash trapping is on the rise and in response, the ATM Industry Association has published a manual detailing emerging fraud trends and methods for ATM owners to combat the problem.