Technology

Equifax's data breach may be the most serious, given that it covered 143 million consumers and involved reams of confidential information, but it wasn't the largest. Following are the biggest to date.

Menusifu receives a $3 million round to boost a system that integrates with Alipay and WeChat Pay, enabling Chinese travelers to make direct payments with renminbi from Chinese bank accounts and digital wallets.

China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges raises questions about the future of digital asset innovation, a movement that some bankers view as a threat and others embrace as a boon to payments, P-to-P lending and other activities.

The third-party wallets don't market interoperability or share much data, frustrating the process of adding new riders.

While the payments industry may believe a "breach fatigue" has set in, it may have been the expectation of a cowed and apathetic public that partly led to Equifax’s maligned response after its data breach was finally made public.

Software PIN pads can be compromised by crooks who intercept the PIN after it's typed. MagicCube attempts to position itself "in the middle" to block these hacking attempts.

Data breaches and payment hacks require not only tech measures, but crisis management. Had Equifax gotten out in front of the story, particularly during the slow news period of August, it would have earned kudos and perhaps mitigated some of the public scrutiny, writes David E. Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called for bipartisan action against Equifax during a Senate floor speech on Tuesday, criticizing the credit bureau for waiting several weeks after a massive data breach to reveal it to the public.

The Equifax breach has millions of Americans now thinking about freezing their credit to guard against identity theft. But those who act could be cutting themselves off from the nation's vast credit economy.

Alipay has worked with First Data, Verifone, Ingenico and others to connect with merchants in North America, but more as a service for Chinese travelers than a direct competitor to existing payment providers.