David Heun

Phoenix Managed Networks says its software addresses card data security in a retail market where technology has expanded much faster than most merchants can grasp.

Cloud-based compliance and data-security provider Trustwave soon will add Web security to its portfolio through the acquisition of M86 Security, an Irvine, Calif.-based provider of advanced antimalware technology.

Visa Europe plans to acquire a 15% minority stake in mobile retail payments provider Mobile Money Network Ltd., the European payment system provider announced March 7.

The complexities of enabling U.S. merchants to accept contactless smart cards and various mobile-payment technologies represent a significant revenue opportunity for VeriFone, the company says.

Citing the completion of its acquisition of Swedish payments provider Point, VeriFone posted a 40.4% increase in fiscal first quarter year-over-year earnings.

Visa had a few concerns about how consumers would react to three Arizona credit unions issuing prepaid gift cards carrying its brand through their ATMs.

Speculation as to the motives of large retailers, such as Target and Wal-Mart, who are creating their own mobile wallet system abound. But there's no question the merchants seek better transaction security and control over customer data.

Strong fourth-quarter earnings for French terminal maker Ingenico signal good news for the payments industry, and likely for Europe's economy overall.

It's a common story: a merchant suffers a payment data breach, the merchant's acquirer gets fined, and the acquirer passes along the fine to the merchant. Usually, life goes on. But an ongoing lawsuit against a Utah restaurant could shake things up for banks.

Offering person-to-person payments initially to its own customers, eventually to all U.K. bank customers.

PayPal, the most prominent player in the online-payments world, is consistently viewed as leaving NFC behind in its pursuit to secure a place in cloud-based mobile payments. But is it really?

PayPal is digging even further into the prepaid card market at a time when more underbanked consumers favor such products. Users of the prepaid card do not need to have a PayPal account — though having one provides additional benefits.

MasterCard does not explicitly require the use of a PIN with chip cards in the U.S., but its sliding scale of liability leaves little other choice.

First Data expects its Star PIN-debit network to benefit this year when the last measure of the Durbin amendment takes hold on April 1, requiring financial institutions with more than $10 billion in assets to have at least two processing networks on their debit cards.

Merchants are adamant that any initiative in the United States for accepting chip cards backed by the EMV security standard establish the chip-and-PIN method — instead of the chip-and-signature option that Visa supports.

Voice biometrics has had its share of starts and stops as an anti-fraud and authentication tool in the past decade. But a person's voice has more than 100 unique characteristics, compared with only 40 for a fingerprint, so the technology has strong potential for data security.

Increased consumer spending had executives from TSYS singing the praises of solid fourth-quarter earnings and, for the time being, soft-pedaling the potential future loss of Green Dot's processing business.

If the competition for providing payments hardware and software were akin to a boxing match, NCR Corp. just came out swinging in an attempt to keep smaller contenders on the ropes.

ThreatMetrix plans to make the best of its recent acquisition of TrustDefender by adding malicious software detection to its fraud-prevention software offerings for banks and retailers.

The Spanish bank will distribute 1 million contactless cards, 17,000 contactless payment terminals and 500 contactless-card-reading ATMs in the city.