12.29.16: Your morning briefing

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Welcome to the new PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Too much caution? Netflix hasn't been breached, but its email alerts are leading some customers to panic anyway. The company has been sending alerts urging customers to change their passwords after detecting a suspicious login attempt, according to an Ars Technica writer who received the alert. It's not unheard of for banks and e-commerce sites to reset passwords in such cases — sometimes going overboard, as when eBay requested that all of its customers reset their passwords after a 2014 breach — but in this case the writer suspects it was a false alarm. "My … concern is that the Netflix notice I received ultimately contains dubious information — at least, as far as I can tell. I pressed both the customer service rep and Netflix's official press representatives for harder data about why exactly my account was flagged or whether some 'suspicious sign-in' had absolutely been tracked, and I never got it," the article states.

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

The sky is the limit: Amazon's drone delivery plans just got a bit bigger. The e-commerce giant has filed a patent for airborne fulfillment centers — or, in plainer terms, warehouses in zeppelins, TechCrunch reports. The airborne centers would house drones and inventory to speed delivery at times when Amazon anticipates a spike in demand, such as during a sporting event, the article states. Additionally, shuttles would carry staff and supplies to the zeppelins, reserving the drones for deliveries only, TechCrunch says.

Where there's smoke … Medical marijuana sales may be legal in Nevada, but there is still some risk involved in becoming a distributor. A bug in the state's website exposed the applications of over 11,700 residents, including their names, addresses, citizenship, physical traits (weight, height, race, eye and hair color), driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers, according to ZDNet. The bug was discovered by a researcher, and the website has since been pulled offline by the state, which says the leak affected only a portion of the state's overall data, according to the article.

Bitcoin's big comeback: The most famous digital currency is having a resurgence. The price of a bitcoin is up about 30% month-to-month, reaching a value of about $950, TechCrunch reports. Though bitcoin's price is known to fluctuate wildly, this milestone is notable because it is approaching a height bitcoin has not seen since January 2014, the article said. The spike is also unusual since it seems to be steady and without any particular catalyst, TechCrunch states.

From the Web (powered by Wiser)

The world’s top mobile money platform is so successful regulators worry it could disrupt the economy
Quartz • Joshua Masinde
At the time of M-Pesa’s launch in 2007, few could have conceived the mobile money service would be as ubiquitous and deeply entrenched in the…

MobiKwik users can soon pay utility bills through wallet
The Economic Times of India • Mugdha Variyar
Other players who have received in-principle approval for a BBPS licence include Paytm, Oxigen Services, BillDesk, and PayU.

Despite Tax Risks, 'Pay Me Next Year' Requests Are Big This Year-End
Forbes • Contributor, Robert W. Wood
Year-end payments--and payments you dodge--can have tricky tax consequences. So be careful of IRS rules this year-end.

More from PaymentsSource

Subscription payment spike is a starting point, not a foregone conclusion
One of the highlights of the holiday season for retailers has been the vast growth of e-commerce, but subscription businesses are also enjoying a sizable bump, providing a potential threat to more static retail gifting.

'Threat intelligence' technology can fight big box data breaches
Data breaches have been proliferating over the past couple of years, but there's new technology out of the 'bot' and analytics worlds that can help.

New York updates cybersecurity rule after banker backlash
The New York State Department of Financial Services has modified its cybersecurity rule after a strong pushback from bankers, including at a hearing in Albany last week.