David Heun

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council has issued guidelines to clear up confusion around tokenization, a process for obscuring sensitive payment card data.

Many merchants may still validate their compliance against the Payment Card Industry data security standard even though Visa has promised to waive that requirement for merchants that accept chip cards, the PCI council says.

Instead of dipping its toe into the mobile-payments pool, Heartland Payment Systems Inc. intends to make a splash with an application and a card reader that attaches to a smart phone like Square's or VeriFone's payWare Mobile readers.

Increases in debit-network fees and favorable changes in foreign currency fueled a 5.4% increase in second-quarter revenue for First Data Corp., to $2.75 billion from $2.61 billion a year ago, the company reported Aug. 3.