Investment

Data breaches and payment hacks require not only tech measures, but crisis management. Had Equifax gotten out in front of the story, particularly during the slow news period of August, it would have earned kudos and perhaps mitigated some of the public scrutiny.

Did hackers access the credit bureau's computers two months earlier than the company first thought?; the Fed's decision to start unwinding its balance sheet should raise rates and boost bank profits.

Historically, the industry has placed much greater emphasis on preventing fraud at the point of transaction without doing enough to stop fraudulent account openings, writes Melissa Townsley, co-founder and CEO of GIACT systems.

Consumers and merchants in a digital ecosystem are changing the way people interact with each other and machines, changing payments and requiring an updated approach to security, according to Mastercard.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Wells Fargo’s treatment of customers was “egregious and unacceptable," hinting that more regulatory action was likely.

Equifax's data breach may be the most serious, given that it covered 143 million consumers and involved reams of confidential information, but it wasn't the largest. Following are the biggest to date.

China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges raises questions about the future of digital asset innovation, a movement that some bankers view as a threat and others embrace as a boon to payments, P-to-P lending and other activities.

While the payments industry may believe a "breach fatigue" has set in, it may have been the expectation of a cowed and apathetic public that partly led to Equifax’s maligned response after its data breach was finally made public.

LendingPoint, which caters to borrowers with damaged credit records, believes that traditional credit scores are overly pessimistic about the likelihood that certain borrowers will repay.

Software PIN pads can be compromised by crooks who intercept the PIN after it's typed. MagicCube attempts to position itself "in the middle" to block these hacking attempts.