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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.