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Clinkle, the well-funded mobile payments startup staffed by former executives of PayPal, Netflix and other e-commerce companies, appears to have had data leaked from its person-to-person payments app, exposing personal information and photos of some of the company's employees.

The likes of Apple and Amazon are becoming bigger threats to incumbent payments companies, but MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga says his company views these players as potential allies.

Acquirers and independent sales organizations can generate more revenue by closely studying what security levels their merchants need, according to a new survey.

The recent spate of retailer data breaches demonstrates the need to embrace security methods such as EMV-chip cards and tokenization to protect transactions, Visa CEO Charlie Scharf told investors on Jan. 30.

Merchants can't pass the blame for data breaches onto financial institutions because protecting consumers is a shared responsibility where both sides have to meet their responsibilities.

PayPal says it did not divulge credit card information from a customer who contends PayPal exploited in a scheme to force him to give up his Twitter handle, "@N."

Total System Services CEO Phil Tomlinson took time out from discussing record revenue during the payments processor's Jan. 28th earnings call to proclaim his company safe from the slate of recent data breaches that have afflicted Target and other retailers.

Michaels is investigating a possible data security attack, CEO Chuck Rubin said in a letter to customers.

While this still hinders some customers' adoption of their bank or credit union's mobile bill pay offerings, in reality, today's technology has made mobile bill pay more secure and easier than ever before.

Retailers are letting Congress know they support federal efforts to thwart cybercrime, while voicing their support of chip-based EMV smartcards combined with PIN authentication as a defense against future breaches.