Compliance

The Backoff malware, which targets point of sale systems and has hit hundreds of businesses, may catalyze adoption of EMV "chip and PIN" cards and two-factor authentication as merchants look for ways to soften the impact of the next attack.

The terminal maker Ingenico, payment processor FreedomPay and technology distributor ScanSource are teaming up to provide a point-to-point encryption system to North America with support for EMV-chip card payments.

Card-not-present merchants are battling increasingly frequent friendly fraud. That type of fraud–the “I don’t recognize” or “I didn’t do it” dispute–occurs when a cardholder makes a purchase, receives the goods or services and initiates a chargeback on the order claiming he or she did not authorize the transaction.

A group of retail trade associations and large retailers wants the Supreme Court to review the Federal Reserve Board's recent cap on debit card swipe fees that merchants say is higher than the fee limit envisioned in the Dodd-Frank Act.

People are still using pedestrian passwords that are easy to break, security company Trustwave has found.

SmartMetric Inc., a maker of biometric smart cards, failed in its appeal of a court decision saying Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. don't infringe a patent for credit and debit cards containing chips.

Supervalu Inc. said customers' payment-card details may have been stolen as the U.S. grocery chain with more than 3,300 stores became the latest to fall victim to hackers.

For some time now, I’ve been using the mobile alerting capabilities offered by my bank and card issuers. The reassurance from knowing that I’ll be notified via text message of typical and not-so-typical transactions puts my mind at ease and gives me a sense of playing a part in the fraud prevention game.

Companies like PayPal and Square reward hackers with "bug bounties" for finding and reporting vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by fraudsters, and their welcoming attitude toward the hacking community is paying off.

Even if it pushes the bank past the October 2015 deadline for EMV-chip card adoption, BMO plans to stick with its magnetic-stripe cards until each one reaches its natural expiration date.