Merchant

With Google Inc.’s Aug. 15 announcement of an agreement to acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, the search giant potentially has turbocharged its mobile-payment plans.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council intends to clear up confusion regarding tokenization, a process designed to protect payment card security.

An Australian credit union in Illawarra is trying to recover after several hundred members were victimized by a card-skimming operation.

An owner of a new restaurant likely would not hesitate to buy a $300 fire extinguisher to comply with local fire codes, but he might put off spending about half that much to ensure compliance with standards designed to protect customers’ credit card data, a new report suggests.

An owner of a new restaurant likely would not hesitate to buy a $300 fire extinguisher to comply with local fire codes, but he might put off spending about half that much to ensure compliance with standards designed to protect customers’ credit card data, a new report suggests.

Visa Inc.’s new U.S. EMV initiative will have far-reaching consequences for merchants and card issuers, but the other card networks may not follow it exactly in drawing their roadmaps for migrating to advanced chip card technologies, certain observers say.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the demise of the decoupled-debit card may have been greatly exaggerated.

Most large U.S. merchants easily will comply with Visa Inc.’s first level of incentives to make payment terminals ready to accept contact and contactless EMV cards next year as part of the card brand’s U.S. push toward chip card technology, but it may take smaller merchants a year or two to get there, payment industry experts suggest.

When newly acquired card customers from HSBC’s U.S. card program and ING’s online bank are folded into Capital One Financial Corp.’s existing base, they will have a rapidly expanding array of digital transaction and payments channels from which to choose.

Consumers accustomed to receiving coupons for product samples or trial sizes of laundry detergent or dish soap in the mail soon instead may receive private-label prepaid cards they could use at a retailer to obtain full-size versions.