As you know from being a savvy/frequent readers of these posts, the world of payments shares a critical motif with life itself: Change is the only constant. And by “change,” we don’t mean those coins in your pocket, left over from the last time you used cash. No, we’re talking about how the way payments are made is shifting, faster and faster — bringing along the need for constantly-changing security, as well.
Tag: credit card news
Under the Frost: Security Tips, Hearings & Getting Ready for Spring
Traditionally, winter is a time to burrow inside, and to get ready for spring: stitching up, repairing and mending items for the outdoor season ahead. And under the frost, plants are doing the same thing, getting ready to sprout and bloom in a few weeks time.
2015: A Sheep Year — But A Safe One?
The New Year celebrating isn’t quite over yet — next month brings us the Chinese New Year. Those followers of Chinese Astrology know that each year is given an “animal” personality, so our upcoming “sheep year” is presumed to be — like its totem animal — somewhat gentle and easygoing.
Chip-and-Pin — or “Chip-and-Sig?”
The new year always brings change — not only the resolutions we manage to keep, but change in the form of new laws, products, calendar deadlines, etc. One such change, slated for 2015, is the arrival, at last, of “EMV” cards as the default standard for American credit card users, those micro-chipped credit and debit cards that are already the standard in most European countries.
A Credit Card Theory of Everything
Quantum physics is suddenly big in pop culture. Black holes and spacetime, for example, are central to both the plots of current films “Interstellar,” and “The Theory of Everything.” In the latter, cosmologist Stephen Hawking spends his life trying to find a single theory to “explain” all of life. Similarly, those mindful of payment card security in an age of proliferating hacks are looking for a single theory — an unassailable, breach-proof idea — to make payments secure and safe for the foreseeable future.
Economic Snapshot: A Bit More “Gravy” This Thanksgiving
While there are always certain bedrock things to be thankful for this time of year — one’s loved ones, good health, warm food on the table — a couple of holiday-themed articles this week underscore that there may be more to give thanks for, this fall, on the economic side, too. Certainly when compared to the more recent Thanksgivings since “The Great Recession.”
The Wallets, They Are A-Changin’
The Wallets, They Are A-Changin’ It’s That Time of Year It’s the time of year where customers are encouraged to…
The Road Ahead for Payments: Yellow Bricks, or Leaking Digits?
As our readers already know, changes are coming to the world of credit cards. Chief among those, as a new article in Wired states, are EMV cards, which “have an embedded microchip that authenticates the card as a legitimate bank card to prevent hackers from embossing stolen card data onto blank cards to use it for fraudulent transactions. The chip contains the same data that traditionally is stored on a card’s magnetic stripe, but also has a certificate used to digitally sign each transaction.
Halloween Spending, Holiday Trends — and Goodbye, Cash?
The Boston Globe says it succinctly: “Consumers may still be holding tight to their wallets after the recession, but there’s at least one occasion that doesn’t appear to have them spooked: Halloween.”
