Economy

Who carries cash anymore? Just about everybody, it turns out.

Holding up his Apple Inc. iPhone, Bob Russo, general manager of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, declares, “This is the most insecure device in the world, and my life is on it.”

After a data breach, merchants are required by law to notify a host of authorities and agencies, a daunting task that presents an opportunity for ISOs and agents.

Can the owners of a small restaurant in Park City, Utah, stand up to a large bank and card-processing company in a court of law? The restaurateurs claim funds were taken from them without their knowledge to cover fines for alleged Payment Card Industry data security compliance violations. Moreover, no one has even proved a breach occurred, the restaurant owners allege.

ISOs and agents may now offer merchants a security package that combines breach protection, consulting services and software that scans computers for unprotected card data.

ACI Worldwide Inc. reported Feb. 14 that income for the fourth-quarter totaled $23.9 million, down 11.8% from a year earlier, as revenue declined.

Many small banks have never accepted that an exemption from the Durbin amendment will protect them from the measure's roughly 50% cut in debit interchange rates.

Consumers trust PayPal Inc. about as much or more than well-established payment networks such as Visa Inc. or MasterCard Worldwide when it comes to emerging mobile payments, but they place the most trust in their bank, new survey data suggest.

In what could mark the beginning of the post-Durbin fee shakeups, merchant acquirers should soon learn n the details of Visa Inc.’s new fixed acquirer network-participation fee.

Imagine a machine that makes your dinner reservations, invites your friends to join you at the restaurant and hands you the cash to cover the check. We’re talking about the ATM of the near future.

A small restaurant in Park City, Utah, figures to play a big role in determining how card networks prove suspected card data security breaches and whether card processors rightfully can deduct funds from merchant accounts–without telling the merchants–to cover their own network fines for breaches allegedly stemming from a client failing to comply with Payment Card Industry data-security standards.

Three months after the so-called Durbin amendment capped debit card interchange fees, Visa Inc. is showing a modest slowdown in its U.S. debit business but nothing on the order of the doomsday scenarios once predicted.

At first, Heartland Payment System Inc.’s insistence it would give its merchant clients 100% of the savings from new, reduced debit-interchange rates sounded like a public relations move. But some observers weren’t convinced the processor would stick with that policy if it didn’t equate to solid financial numbers.

Because 2012 represents a “feedback year” in the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council’s three-year cycle for establishing data-security standards, new council Chairman Mike Mitchell figures to absorb plenty of viewpoints about issues facing the industry along with the traditional complaints about compliance testing and costs.

MOUNT SNOW, VT.–An upbeat crowd filled the conference room and jammed the exhibit hall last week here at the Northeast Acquirers Association 2012 Winter Seminar and Outing, despite a relatively weak national economy, a decidedly bad local economy and weather a little too warm for skiing.

MOUNT SNOW, VT.–Social media, including Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, have limited but important uses in the acquiring business, according to Kevin Jones, president of SignaPay Ltd., an Irving, Texas-based ISO and processor.

WASHINGTON–A House bill aims to ease the tax-reporting requirements for retailers that rely on card purchases, which could stave off a wave of confused phone calls from merchants to their ISOs, agents and processors, according to the bill’s supporters.

A data-security provider is turning the time-tested “to-do list” into a technological tool merchants may use to protect credit card data and stay on track with Payment Card Industry data security standard compliance.

After a round of acquisitions, Cardtronics Inc. reported a surge in fourth-quarter revenue along with an uptick in expenses.

First Data Corp. expects to benefit this year when the last measure of the new debit-interchange legislation under the Durbin amendment takes hold on April 1, requiring financial institutions with more than $10 billion in assets to have at least two processing networks on their debit cards.