The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Health care alliance: Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway are collaborating on health care programs, with a focus on cost reduction and "employee satisfaction." The three companies will form an independent company that will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints," according to a
A new voice for retailers: Voice computing company VoiceLabs has launched Alpine, which builds voice shopping apps for retailers and then uses artificial intelligence to improve performance over time and eventually turn voice service sessions into referrals, sales and e-commerce payments.
Fingerprint workaround: Some Lenovo computers have a vulnerability due to encryption shortfalls, the company reports in a
One in ten: More than 33 million Americans, or about ten percent, were victims of card fraud in 2017, according to LendingTree unit CompareCards. More than 66% of victims reported that someone tried to make a purchase with their digital account information, even though the actual plastic card was not stolen. Also, 47% of victims said their bank contacted them first about the fraud, with 37% saying they learned of the fraud first by reviewing account statements. And debit and credit cards were targeted equally, suggesting one type of card isn't inherently safer than the other.
Who can't use passwords? Payment companies are anxious to get rid of
UnionPay gets more mobile: UnionPay is collaborating with smartphone maker Huawei to promote international use of Huawei Pay. The partnership will allow smartphone users to add UnionPay cards to a smartphone that can support Huawei Pay for contactless and in-app payments, with tokenization providing security. Huawei Pay is a Chinese mobile payment service that has 66 banks and 20 mobile devices in its network.
From the Web
The Guardian | Mon Jan 29, 2018 - What is a cryptocurrency? Is it like bitcoin? In a word, yes. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and is still the biggest, but in the eight years since it was created pretenders to the throne have come along. All of them have the same basic underpinnings: they use a “blockchain”, a shared public record of transactions, to create and track a new type of digital token – one that can only be made and shared according to the agreed-upon rules of the network, whatever they may be. But the flourishing ecosystem has provided a huge amount of variation on top of that. Some cryptocurrencies, such as Litecoin or Dogecoin, fulfil the same purpose as bitcoin – building a new digital currency – with tweaks to some of the details (making transactions faster, for instance, or ensuring a basic level of inflation). Others, such as Ethereum or Bat, take the same principle but apply it to a specific purpose: cloud computing or digital advertising in the case of those two.
The Times | Mon Jan 29, 2018 - A cryptocurrency broker who has carried out more than 100,000 online trades was robbed at gunpoint in his home and forced to transfer bitcoin funds. Danny Aston, 30, and his girlfriend, Amy Jay, 31, are believed to be victims of the UK’s first bitcoin heist after they were attacked at their home in a quiet Oxfordshire village, from where they ran a digital currency company.
Reuters | Tue Jan 30, 2018 - Fintech firms, offering loans of as little as a few hundred dollars, are seeing a spike in lending in Indonesia where tens of millions of people have little or no access to bank credit - helping alleviate a financing shortfall estimated at more than $73 billion. The emergence of these peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms has so far been welcomed by Indonesia’s financial regulators which see them as offering a much needed service to cash-strapped businesses and consumers at a time when Southeast Asia’s biggest economy has been hobbled by sluggish bank lending.
More from PaymentsSource
Dishonestly taking advantage of false membership in a group to score a discount sounds like something most people wouldn't dare do, but it's enough of a threat to retailers that investors see future returns in technologies that guard against it.
PCI compliance won't be enough to meet the strict requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation, which takes hold May 25 in Europe.
Data analytics provider RELX Group has agreed to acquire ThreatMetrix and its digital risk-assessment network for $816.5 million (580 million pounds) in cash.
Wirecard is working with Fortress GB on new payments technology that will enable fans of two U.K.-based football clubs to earn points and cash-back rewards when making purchases inside stadiums at sporting events — and will track their spending data to decide on future offers.
