Data security

Even after partnering with MasterCard, Zwipe has a long journey ahead before its contactless cards with fingerprint authentication see mass adoption. But the high-tech cards have the potential to suppress fraud and deter security breaches beyond what traditional EMV-chip cards can do.

With the EMV migration in the U.S. in full swing, fraud is making its own migration to card-not-present (CNP) transactions, and one way to thwart the fraudsters is a digitized card security code—provided the technology can be produced for a mass audience.

Apple Pay's launch coincided with the start of SourceMedia's PayThink conference in Phoenix, where executives from many banks and other financial companies provided their impressions of Apple's new mobile wallet.

Even though U.S. merchants and acquirers have known about the looming deadline for EMV-chip card adoption for three years, their progress has been slow.

MasterCard is determined to take its tokenization technology for Apple Pay and spread the security method to many other payment products, including the card brand's own MasterPass digital wallet.

Google will enhance its verification system for accounts by supporting identity standards developed by FIDO (Fast Identity Online), an industry alliance that aims to increase operability between authentication technology systems.

Staples Inc., the world’s largest office-supply chain, is investigating a potential breach of customer credit-card data, becoming the latest retailer to confront a threat from hackers in recent months.

A few hours into Apple Pay's Oct. 20 launch, Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the company was not looking to exploit its payments data.

An executive order signed by President Obama on Friday that mandated the adoption of chip and PIN technology in government cards and enabled its use in facilities like Post Offices is a "meaningless gesture" that smacks of politics over substance.

As Apple Pay launches Oct. 20, the new mobile wallet will be put to the test. It has the prestige of Apple and the participation of hundreds of card issuers, but it also faces several challenges that may be difficult to overcome.

The White House is slated to unveil a major package of initiatives on Friday to increase data security for financial transactions, including an executive order to add chip-and-PIN technology to government-issued credit and debit cards.

MasterCard will launch a contactless card with a built-in fingerprint sensor in the U.K. in early 2015 with Norwegian payment technology provider Zwipe.

Almost half of merchant payment-card terminals in the U.S. will be able to handle more secure EMV- chip technology by the end of 2015, according to an industry group.

Web standards developer W3C has formed the Web Payments Interest Group to create security and customer experience standards.

Next year's updates to the Payment Card Industry data security standards will give compliant retailers better protection, but hackers will be targeting the weaknesses of companies that don't put in extra effort.

The growing prevalence of Internet-connected devices, along with a seemingly endless string of data breaches, is creating more opportunity to convince retailers to safeguard sensitive account data through new technology.

Fuel retailers may shudder at the potential costs of upgrading gas pumps for EMV chip-based card acceptance, but they are a prime target for vendors offering secure mobile payments and deeper fraud-screening analytics.

Friendly fraud may sound like less of a threat to business than other more large-scale, aggressive attacks, but this sleeper predator costs retailers nearly $12 billion per year, leaving unprotected merchants completely empty-handed and liable for fraud that wasn’t really fraud in the first place.

International Dairy Queen, the ice cream chain owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said customer data were compromised by hackers.

Merchants hope this year's holiday shopping season is better than last year, when high profile data breaches stole the headlines.