Cards

R&D capabilities at Interac got a boost last month when Interac Corp. was created by merging Interac Association and Acxys Corp. It brought together a payments network handling nearly 5.7 billion debit transactions annually with a company specializing in payments development, management and consultation.

A strategic payments plan could shine a light on critical gaps in a community bank’s offerings; one frequently missed opportunity is credit cards, writes Deborah Matthews Phillips, managing director of payment strategy for Jack Henry & Associates.

To bypass the customer in setting up millions of phony card accounts, Wells Fargo employees took advantage of the bank’s continuing reliance on single factor authentication, writes Patrick Cox, CEO of TRUSTID.

Wirecard has gained a foothold in using virtual prepaid cards to streamline corporate payments across business units, platforms and borders for companies with sprawling operations. Now the German company wants to do the same for more U.S. companies going global.

Emphasizing its commitment to data advancement and security, Mastercard has named JoAnn C. Stonier as its first chief data officer.

In recent weeks three surveys have been released that assess the U.S. fraud landscape across all of these audiences. These reports provide a holistic snapshot of where payments fraud in the U.S. is today.

In the rising tide of e-commerce fraud, one of the trickiest areas to control is so-called friendly fraud, particularly within the growing markets for digital goods.

Walmart is the first major merchant to add Fiserv’s Accel signature debit service following the debit network’s recent expansion of routing options, in a move to cut costs for card acceptance.

On-card biometrics is the final piece of the puzzle to bring trust and security to contactless payments without compromising convenience, writes Lina Andolf-Orup, global product marketing manager at Fingerprints.

Strong holiday spending was marked by active e-commerce spending, providing an impetus to invest in more digital payment technology.