Compliance

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday formally signed off on the creation of a national intelligence center to share information about cyber threats.

Merchants opposed to the U.S. migration to EMV-chip cards have long questioned whether the security benefit is worth the expense of putting in new payment terminals. American Express is taking some of the cost out of the equation, but even this move might not be enough to bring most merchants on board.

Gemalto reassured investors this morning that the alleged attacks by U.S. and U.K. government agents only breached the company's office network and could not have led to theft of encryption keys, which are considered an important part of digital payments security.

During an unusually aggressive bout of questioning for Yellen, particularly from a lawmaker generally regarded as supportive of the Fed chair, Warren questioned comments made by Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez last year raising concerns with aspects of the financial reform law.

The Federal Reserve is encouraging the industry to explore faster payments, and that is all well and good. But effectively directing it to do so is beyond its authority and would be a mistake.

Capital One has received requests for information from federal regulators about its anti-money-laundering program and check casher clients, as authorities lean on banks to do a more thorough job policing their customers — and their customers' customers.

The heightened regulatory environment for servicers has also prompted a wave of process improvements.

Bluefin Payment Systems, a technology vendor based in Georgia, will provide mobile point-to-point encryption technology to Infinite Peripherals, a point of sale system provider.

Visa Europe will introduce tokenization part of a new mobile payment service it plans to launch in April.

NAFCU is urging NCUA to outline its overarching approach to risk mitigation in the CU system, in light of several recent moves the agency has made or has indicated it will be tackling in the near future.