Technology

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has fined a medical debt collector and ordered the company to provide financial relief to consumers for mishandling credit-reporting disputes.

Mobile card acceptance devices have changed a lot in recent years. They are now much more complex than the simple plug-in card readers many are familiar with. And their evolution is far from over.

Visa is trying to accelerate the rollout of new digital payment services by making it easier for companies to connect with each other, but its terms may undermine the business models of larger tech companies.

What good is having a mobile point of sale (mPOS) device if retailers glue it to the countertop? In a new IHL report that tries to size up the mPOS market, IHL points out that most merchants are happy to ignore the mobility inherent in their new technology.

Banks are becoming interested in behavioral biometrics, or turning a consumer's unique physical handling of a mobile device into a security profile, but the more appealing use case could be for payment acceptance.

Banks are choosing to enable payment functionality through third party “Pay” wallet offerings in most part, and not their own mobile apps. And these are the same internet and technology companies banks themselves perceive to be their biggest threats.

Most banks that deploy voice authentication require a specific spoken passphrase. Eastern Bank customers can have a normal conversation with call center reps; software in the background compares their voice patterns to a recorded snippet.

Tyro Payments, of Australia, will integrate its point of sale technology with the in-restaurant ordering and payment system made by Canada's TouchBistro.

Financial services technology provider Fiserv has updated its capabilities to handle EMV-chip card production entirely in-house.

Most passwords rely too much on pet names, anniversary dates and other easily-guessed concepts. But replacing those words with pictures could provide a substantial improvement in security.