David Heun

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.

Diebold is designing a system to connect its ATMs to Verizon Wireless' 4G data network to improve service and security.

Small ferry service lets riders pay using an Android phone, an iPhone or an iPad.

Only 24% of U.S. adults would feel safe buying something directly from a Facebook page.

Any thought that Visa Inc. was interested in merchant acquiring quickly dissipated last week, when the card network decided to sell an online merchant portfolio it inherited from a purchase two years ago to Global Payments.

With its Jan. 5 unveiling of an at-the-table digital payment terminal called the Rail, Viableware joined other technology companies that for the past couple of years have been trying to eliminate the standard restaurant bill-payment methods.

As Global Payments Inc. reported quarterly earnings, the processor announced a deal to purchase CyberSource's U.S. merchant-acquiring portfolio from Visa Inc.

A startup aims to make alternative payment options as streamlined as using bank-issued cards online by removing the need to authenticate the user at a separate website.

In the realm of payment card data security, 2011 qualifies as the year in which "more" became a key term on many levels.

As more banks allow smartphones to remotely access sensitive systems, they may need to beef up their security for handhelds.

A Northern Michigan gas station redesigned the payment process around drivers' IDs to deter dishonest motorists that were driving off without paying for their gas.