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Stealth Skimmer: Pottsgrove, Pa., police are looking for two suspects in connection to a card and PIN skimmer in checkout lanes at regional Aldi supermarkets. The men are using a hard-to-spot version of skimmers that "overlay" the top of the customer-facing card terminal, reports security writer
Tap for fundraising: Fundraising was an early use case for
Another reason to dump mag stripe: Forcepoint has discovered new malware that targets hotels and restaurants where there's still a large number of magnetic stripe payment terminals.
From the Web
Reuters | Fri Feb 9, 2018 - The Nordic region’s biggest banks may form a joint regional system to facilitate payments, they said on Friday, in the latest sign of cooperation to stave off competition from fintech upstarts and Silicon Valley giants. Recent regulatory changes in Europe open up parts of the banking market to companies that were not traditionally part of the industry, including the likes of Facebook and Amazon, triggering more competition for incumbents. Despite close ties between Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, the Nordic countries’ current payment infrastructure is highly fragmented along national borders, the region’s banks said.
Reuters | Fri Feb 9, 2018 - British business travel company Hogg Robinson Group said American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) made a recommended offer for the company and that it agreed to sell its payments technology business, Fraedom, to Visa Inc. Hogg Robinson said GBT would pay up to 120 pence per share, which according to Reuters calculations would value the company at up to 393.1 million pounds ($549.6 million), a nearly 54 percent premium to the stock’s close on Thursday. U.S. credit card issuer American Express Co has a 50 percent holding in American Express GBT. Visa said it would pay 141.8 million pounds for Fraedom. However, if the Fraedom sale does not complete prior to a court meeting to approve the AmEx GBT takeover, Hogg Robinson said its shareholders would receive a minimum consideration of 110 pence per share in cash. Visa said separately that it expected the Fraedom deal to close in the first quarter of 2018.
TechCrunch | Thu Feb 8, 2018 - With cryptocurrency prices reaching all-time highs and total market capitalization topping $800 billion recently, everyone wants to know if we’re witnessing the second coming of the internet or the craziest bubble of all time. Today, we have blockchain projects raising hundreds of millions of dollars with little more than a whitepaper — no product, no traction, just an idea and some technical specifications. You don’t need to be in venture capital to understand this level of speculation is unsustainable. At the same time, however, we saw much the same in the early stages of the internet, and look where we are today.
More from PaymentsSource
In many ways, the goal of the GDPR is to increase difficulty for a hacker, while also flipping the rights of data ownership back to the European consumer. U.S. companies that serve European consumers are obligated to follow the regulations.
Advances in mobile technology have also permeated into other products, including point of sale hardware. With mobile point of sale devices being updated to include sophisticated software, there is more real-time capture of customer data in the store.
Emphasizing its commitment to data advancement and security, Mastercard has named JoAnn C. Stonier as its first chief data officer.
As owner of Whole Foods Market, Amazon is bringing one of its key strengths — swift product delivery — to its retail grocery store business.
