Data and information management

As U.S. issuers and financial institutions prepare for the shift to EMV, two significant benefits over traditional magnetic stripe cards are clear: increased security and reduced incidences of card fraud. However, the migration itself poses risks that must be addressed.

Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy in Japan, focusing attention on the digital currency’s risks.

Target's profit fell nearly 50 percent in its fourth fiscal quarter and declined by more than a third for all of 2013, the retailer reports, damage likely the result of the credit card data breach that compromised information on as many as 110 million customers.

Visa has developed a new service that aims to reduce prepaid card fraud.

The U.S. payments industry has long agreed to disagree on the way to properly route EMV debit transactions, stalling the country's shift to chip-based cards. First Data hopes its decision to support and share Visa's technology will finally break the stalemate.

The payments industry still has much to do before anyone can claim mobile payments are secure. Many merchants, consumers, and processors are mistakenly comfortable with notion that encryption equals full security.

Visa Inc. and First Data's Star Network will share Visa's technology for routing debit transactions initiated through EMV chip-based cards.

After every major Samsung product unveiling this week, PayPal was quick to say: we have an app for that.

CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski wants his company, Klarna AB, to be the Apple of European payments. That is to say, he is trying to earn a reputation for being "better than the rest in every small detail… of technology and innovation."

For years, the U.S. has been divided on whether EMV-chip cards should be deployed as chip-and-PIN cards or the simpler chip-and-signature. After the Target data breach drew attention to the threat of data theft, the PIN debate seems to have lost its edge but it hasn't gone away.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will issue chip-and-PIN credit cards this year, a deviation from the company's earlier plans to issue only chip-and-signature cards.

Target's recent commitment to fast-track its conversion to EMV smartcard technology may not trigger an avalanche of U.S. retailers doing the same, but Target's move seems to have become a catalyst to resolve the payments industry's other issues around EMV adoption.

MasterCard and telcommunications technology provider Syniverse are testing a service designed to protect card transactions for travelers by allowing payments only when a user's mobile device is switched on in a specific location.

PayPal will support mobile fingerprint authentication on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 mobile phone, enabling Samsung customers to use their fingers to log in to shop at merchants who accept PayPal.

Accenture has launched a new mobile wallet that will include consumer analytics and data capabilities, allowing its clients to handle payments and create personalized offers.

Wells Fargo Bank is lowering the bar for some government-backed mortgages in hopes of boosting homeownership among people with credit scores harmed by the recession.

The regulatory pressures on JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) consumer debt collections operation continue to squeeze its recoveries.

According to new fraud prevention company Forter, the best way for merchants to combat electronic payments fraud is hand off the responsibility entirely.

EMV security is in the spotlight after a recent string of retailer breaches affecting magnetic-stripe card data, but many critics call EMV-chip cards "last decade's technology."

Retail giant Target Corp.'s headache-inducing data breach brings to mind the 1982 Tylenol poisoning crisis—an event that drug maker Johnson & Johnson handled with such aplomb that it restored public confidence in its medicine, altered the way retailers handle product safety and established itself as the gold standard for crisis management.