As noted in this space before, new EMV (Europay/MasterCard/Visa) security standards are slowly coming to credit cards in America. Basically, the card relies on a chip, rather than a magnetic stripe, for its pertinent information, and its information is harder to clone, or hack.
Year: 2013
Another “Phantom Menace:” Contactless Charges
This is a follow up on a couple of recent items we’ve had here lately, about security not only in an age of mobile technology, but security in an age where information between devices can be transferred with a literal “touch,” or “bump.”
Of Security and Summer Destinations
Of Security and Summer Destinations Credit Card News Synopsis We watch the credit card news so you don’t have to.…
Dueling Reports, and Women: They’re Better Credit Risks Than Men. Or Not.
Once again, this week’s news cycle in the world of credit and finance gives us a fascinating glimpse into how varied the metrics are of credit card reporting, to the degree that two different studies can came out at the same time, each claiming different conclusions about how women use credit cards.
On the Road: Best Cards For the Season Ahead
Memorial Day beckons as the official kick-off to the summer travel season, but your AVPS blog correspondents already have one child flying back from college for the break, and we’ve booked an interestingly complicated itinerary for a summer flight of our own. So travel season, it appears, is here.
In the News: Card Use Encouraged; Card Use Cut Back
It’s that time of year where we start to monitor the trends over consumer card use — particularly with summer travel season looming. But two other initial trends this spring caught our eye first, and may shed some light on where your customers are at.
Your Credit Card Could Start Literally “Leaking” Data in the Smartphone Era
By way of a heads-up comes this news from Canada, and reported in the northerly edition of Huffington Post (and later picked up in Forbes’ credit card “round up” column). We’ve mentioned those embedded chips that are due to replace magnetic strips on most credit cards (and have to a large extent in Europe — where the upgraded plastic is the “EMV” standard we’ve written about here before).
Follow-up: Senate Getting Ready to Hit “Send” on Online Sales Tax
Part of reporting financial, economic and practical news that helps your business, and illuminates the climate your business operates in, is to make sure we follow up on the “developing” trends and stories posted here. We wrote recently of the proposed online sales tax in Congress, where it seems after years of refusing to allow states to carry out such taxation in the “early days” of online commerce, it appears that the confluence of online retail being robust, mostly thriving, and clearly here-to-stay, along with the chronic budget woes of states, have combined to make a green light for such taxes likelier than ever before.
More Credit Fraud — But More Potential Security, too
The news in credit cards this week is kind of yin/yang, straddling both sides of the security fence. On the one hand, there’s news of another breach, this one affecting the St. Louis- based Schnucks Market chain, which confirmed an April 15 “hack” affecting 2.4 million credit and debit cards, used at nearly 80% of its 100 stores. Track 2 card numbers and expiration data were were breached in specific stores, and depending where your customers are based, they may not be affected at all.
