Data security

A new Jack Henry program can speed EMV-chip card migration for card issuers by up to a year — but only for credit cards, since ongoing legal issues hamper the use of EMV for debit cards.

The St. Louis-based grocery chain Schnucks Markets Inc. continues to face legal woes, four months after disclosing that up to 2.4 million credit and debit card numbers were exposed in a data breach initiated last December.

Lawyers for clothing retailer Genesco Inc. last week requested summary judgment on its request to dismiss $10,000 in data breach fines from Visa Inc.

Fraudsters are once again taking a shine to using tin foil to tamper with the satellite dishes that gas stations use to transmit payment card data to authorizing banks and processors.

MasterCard's biometric security venture with the South African Social Security Agency has helped the agency distribute more than 10 million active MasterCard debit cards throughout the country.

Gas station owners may have the most difficult task of any retailers in preparing for mobile payments and EMV cards because of their dated systems and equipment — and because many of their customers fear that using their phones at the pump will cause fires.

PayPal has made its portable chip-and-PIN card reader, called PayPal Here, available to all merchants in the U.K.

Trustwave and Transaction Network Services (TNS) plan to jointly provide an encryption service designed to shield payment card information.

The Online Lenders Alliance wants Nacha, the group that manages a U.S. payment system, to clarify warnings on illegal use of the network by payday-loan firms, saying the message is posing a threat to legitimate business.

Payments processor Total System Services, or TSYS, has added a fraud mitigation program from Fair Isaac Corp., a data analysis and credit risk company commonly known as FICO.

Bitcoin users who help maintain the digital ecosystem's official record of transactions may soon find themselves required to register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as administrators of the alternative currency.

Microsoft Corp. is joining Eurosmart, a Brussels, Belgium-based association that develops security standards for smart cards, terminals and other electronic applications.

With its latest proposal, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council aims to make card data security more straightforward for merchants and organizations accepting payments.

As many as 30% of merchants bailed out on their Payment Card Industry data security test because they didn't have time or didn't understand it, ControlScan says. The vendor aims to improve the process by suppressing irrelevant questions and putting the easiest questions first.

Dmitriy Smilianets, 29, appeared Aug. 12 in federal court in Newark, N.J., where prosecutors said July 26 he was indicted with three other Russians and a Ukrainian. They are accused of hacking 17 retailers, financial institutions and payment processors, including 7-Eleven Inc., Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., Carrefour SA and J.C. Penney Co., to steal more than 160 million credit- and debit-card numbers.

In the race to provide consumers with identity verification tools that are simple and easy to use, it's in everyone's best interest to ensure that businesses are not sacrificing data security in the process.

ID Analytics Inc. wants to make sure banks know when a fraudster has taken over an account and is trying to go wild with card payments or money transfers.

EMV chips improve security over magnetic-stripe cards, but they have not been easy to implement. Years ago, a Forrester analyst said "the U.S. is going to adopt EMV in about the same way the U.S. adopted the metric system — somewhere between kicking and screaming and not at all." What have been the biggest hurdles?

Migrating to EMV does not mean card issuers have to do away with their instant-issuance systems.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council is making its security standards available on a Russian-language microsite as part of a move to promote data security in Russia.