Technology

If consumers embrace a system in which they pay for coffee at Starbucks with their smartphones, will they do the same for Whoppers at Burger King?

A proposal by regulators to revamp the way banks must measure risk on certain assets is alarming many community bankers, who argue it will raise capital requirements, increase compliance costs and curb lending.

Bethpage (N.Y.) Federal Credit Union says an employee accidentally exposed personal information from 86,000 of its members’ Visa debit card accounts on the Internet, the issuer announced June 12.

Though last week’s announced breach of 6.5 million LinkedIn Corp. passwords may not have sent immediate shockwaves through the payments industry, data-security vendors warn that cybercrooks tend to have payment card and personal data targets in mind once they steal social network passwords.

The personal information of certain merchants may have been exposed in addition to the consumer data breach Global Payments reported in March, the processor said June 12.

Using someone’s characteristics or traits as an authentication tool has long been a successful method for screening access to highly secure government or corporate locations. But could the use of similar biometrics, considered by many to be a nearly fool-proof security method, ever find a significant–and lasting–presence in the payments industry?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is probing whether the country's largest banks are party to discriminatory car loans, according to industry participants and attorneys.

Subprime credit card borrowers are on the move again, opening significantly more new accounts than they did during the recession as lenders ease up on their ultra-tight underwriting standards.

Signature Systems says its Swift Exchange platform can address a pain point for rewards wallets: rewards are easier for consumers to earn than to spend.

The biometric security company SmartMetric has secured an additional $1 million in funding from investors.