Owning a small business often means having to wear many different hats - marketer, accountant, building manager, and Web tech whiz, to name a few. But when it comes to figuring out what's behind credit card companies' charges for handling your customers' transactions - known as interchange fees - that can be one hat too many.
Pressed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Visa Inc. has changed its operating rules to allow PINless debit card transactions for small-ticket purchases, just as it waives the signature requirement for low-value purchases on its signature-based Visa check card.
Visa has announced that it is implementing processing and rate changes that will result in benefits for American consumers and fuel merchants frustrated by rising prices at the pump.
On June 30, the PCI Security Standards Council, the independent body that administers the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, will make mandatory protection measures in its rules about Internet-facing software applications that the Council currently classifies as best practices.
American Express announced today that it has reached an agreement with MasterCard Inc. to drop a lawsuit alleging that MasterCard had illegally blocked American Express from the bank-issued card business. Under the terms of the agreement, MasterCard will pay American Express up to $1.8 billion.
Verizon Business has announced a comprehensive report on data breaches concluding that "nearly nine in 10 corporate data breaches could have been prevented had reasonable security measures been in place." The study also provides key recommendations to help businesses protect themselves and urges them to be proactive.
Discover Financial Services is seeking more than $6 billion in damages in its 4-year-old case against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., according to documents unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.
Indiana-based 1st Source Bank is reissuing its entire portfolio of debit cards after a hacker or hackers broke into a bank server containing debit card data.
About 80 people who bought gas with their debit cards at an Arco station in San Jose had a total of $45,000 drained from their bank accounts by thieves suspected of pulling the same scam at the company's stations elsewhere in California.
Major credit card companies had a good idea when they decided to pursue a standard for cardholder data protection. Data breaches were on the rise and credit card information was being targeted. So why were so many merchants standing on the dock after the PCI boat has sailed?
Retailers accused Visa and MasterCard during a recent congressional hearing of levying excessive fees, while the card company executives countered that retailer-supported legislation would simply push more of the cost onto consumers.
The marketers of a debit and credit card processing services operation have agreed to judgments of more than $26 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they deceived small businesses throughout the country.
Payment card interchange will be in Congress' spotlight again when the House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing about the controversial Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008, a bill that would put price controls on card-acceptance costs.
Dave & Buster's, a popular eatery and arcade, is the latest U.S. firm to be hit by hackers bent on stealing credit card data. This breach, much like one a few months ago at the East Coast grocery chain Hannaford, was the result of strategically placed malware that recorded credit card data in transit. These breaches illustrate the need for more stringent payment card security standards.
Thieves are copying the information stored on magnetic strips onto counterfeit cards. This ABC News segment shows how it's done and what you need to do to avoid becoming a victim.
Paying breach bill may not buy Hannaford full data protection. The grocer is spending millions of dollars on new IT security tools. But they might not have prevented the theft of payment data from its systems.
Discover Financial Services LLC becomes a global payments player with its pending deal to buy Diners Club International from Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank N.A. for $165 million in cash.
Data breaches disclosed by Hannaford Bros Supermarket Chain, GE Money, and Georgetown University are just some of the 167 breaches reported during the first quarter of 2008, according to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). This is more than double the first quarter in 2007 (76 breaches).
Fraudsters planted so-called malware, or malicious software, on servers at about 300 supermarkets in or affiliated with the Hannaford Bros. Inc. supermarket chain and with it were able to steal credit and debit card data. The thefts happened even though Hannaford at the time was compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI.
The Federal Trade Commission has announced that TJX has agreed to settle charges that it engaged in practices that, taken together, failed to provide reasonable and appropriate security for sensitive consumer information.
News of the first big data breach of 2008 broke recently when grocery chain Hannaford Bros. Co. acknowledged a data intrusion into its computer network that resulted in the theft of a reported 4.2 million customer credit and debit card numbers.
MasterCard International said it welcomed a U.S. appeals court's dismissal of an antitrust lawsuit by a group of merchants claiming that the company, Visa USA and three banks had conspired to set fees charged to businesses for credit card sales.
Risk-scoring models, or fraud screens, designed to block specific types of fraud experienced by individual retailers were cited most often as the most effective risk management tools in a study by CyberSource Corp.
Facing financial markets that have been roiled by troubled subprime mortgages and a weakening economy, Visa Inc. on Monday said it is seeking to raise $15 billion to $17 billion in its upcoming initial public offering of common stock - an amount that even on the low end would be a record IPO.
A bill introduced into the Vermont House of Representatives in January 2008, H.600, would force hard copy disclosure to Vermont merchants of the interchange fees set by Visa Inc., MasterCard Worldwide and other credit card companies.
Should the restaurant wait staff have to pay its share of the processing fee when the tip is put on a credit card bill? Some restaurants have been reducing tips by assessing the fee for years, but the practice is attracting new interest as processing fees rise and profit margins tighten.
The PCI Security Standards Council has announced that its updated Self Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) for merchants and service providers is now available.
A father and son were sentenced earlier this week for defrauding about 1,200 customers out of roughly $125,000. The two operated NorCal CSI, a Sacramento-area company that acted as an independent sales agent for a credit card processing company.
The parent company of Outback Steakhouse and its sibling restaurants has rescinded a policy of requiring its wait staff to cover credit-card processing fees for tips included on their customers' bills.
When credit gets tight, the vampires come out. Now feasting on small businesses is a cadre of "merchant cash advance" (MCA) shops. These lenders of last resort give small businesses cash today in return for a percentage of their future credit card sales.
Miami is now viewed as the riskiest city for e-commerce in the U.S., according to a new survey by online payment security services vendor CyberSource Corp. Miami bumped New York from the top spot this year in the annual survey.
Merchants accounting for two-thirds of Visa Inc.'s U.S. transaction volume have validated compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, Visa reported. PCI is the card networks' controversial joint set of rules for protecting cardholder and transaction data.
Personal information on about 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney and up to 100 other retailers could be compromised after a computer tape went missing. GE Money, which handles credit card operations for Penney and many other retailers, said Thursday night that the missing information includes Social Security numbers for about 150,000 people.
The retailer TJX is close to reaching agreement with U.S card issuers which suffered financial losses as a result of the security breach in its computer systems.
