credits

Verizon is now selling Intuit's GoPayment credit card reader for free at its retail stores.

Thanks to a new partnership between Verizon Wireless and Intuit, business customers can get the mobile card reader for free after a $30 rebate and the activation of a GoPayment account. The card reader and its app can be found at all of Verizon's retail stores and as well as its business-to-business outlets.

Intuit's GoPayment system is geared toward small and midsize businesses that need to process credit cards on the go. The reader itself plugs into a smartphone or tablet. After customers swipe their credit or debit card through the reader, the payment is processed automatically and the funds sent to the merchant's bank account within a few days.… Read more

A year from now, MasterCard and its PayPass tap-to-pay network will serve as a cornerstone of mobile-payments in the U.S.

At least, that's according Ed McLaughlin, head of emerging payments for the world's second-largest payments network.

"The PayPass functionality will serve as an anchor," McLaughlin said in a recent interview with CNET.

Those are bold words considering the mobile-payments business is still in its infancy. But MasterCard has reason to be confident. It's the only credit card company to play a role in both of the major burgeoning alliances, including the Google Wallet initiative … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Researchers at the Black Hat security conference today revealed two ways the Square payment system, which turns any iPhone, iPad or Android into a point-of-sale credit card processor, could be used for fraud.

Adam Laurie and Zac Franken, directors of Aperture Labs, discovered that they can transfer money from a stolen card into their bank account associated with Square without having to swipe a card through the Square dongle card reader. To do this, they used code written by Laurie that lets them feed magnetic stripe data from a stolen card into a microphone and convert it into a … Read more

RadioShack said today that it plans to drop T-Mobile USA and start selling Verizon Wireless products and services in its stores beginning in September.

The switch allows RadioShack to tap into Verizon Wireless's customer base, which is currently the largest in the nation. It's also a calculated move to detach itself away from T-Mobile, which is going through the process of being acquired by AT&T. T-Mobile, however, said it was the one who decided to stop working with RadioShack.

"This is a substantial win for our customers, as this relationship with the nation's largest … Read more

"It's Square without hardware." That's how Jumio CEO Daniel Mattes describes his new credit card processing system, which uses cameras on consumer devices to read credit card info and to verify the authenticity and presence of the actual card itself.

In addition to saving users time (they don't have to type in credit card number if they're checking out at a site that uses Jumio), Mattes also says his system prevents against fraud: It can tell if the card the software is looking at is real plastic, if the numbers are embossed, even if the hologram on a card is real. Jumio, he says, destroys the criminal model of stealing credit card numbers. Now the bad guys need to have the cards themselves. Or a technological solution to fake out a webcam.

Sending the encrypted video stream also foils keyloggers.

In the future, Jumio might also be able to authorize credit transactions against additional tokens, like driver's licenses. It may eventually even verify against faces.

The service currently works through a Flash-based app that access a computer's Webcam. A mobile version is forthcoming, Mattes says.

There's no question that being able to hold up a credit card to a camera is easier than having to type in numbers. It's also more secure, although not absolutely so.

Jumio improves the convenience and security of the credit card system and has the big advantage of requiring no major infrastructure or behavioral change by consumers or credit card companies. But I would argue that the whole credit card concept is antiquated and has to go. Just ask yourself: if you were designing a new consumer transaction system today, would you base it on static, human-readable numbers engraved on physical tokens? Technologies like Jumio can plaster over the flaws in this ancient architecture--and profit greatly in the process--but really it's time for a new way to grant access to, and prevent fraud of, financial accounts.

I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

To stimulate your thinking, see 'Smart' credit cards get closer to consumers' wallets.… Read more

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET (and elsewhere) for Tuesday, July 19.

• Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will support key Android partner HTC in its patent fight with Apple. Speaking at a Google mobile conference in Tokyo today, Schmidt didn't specify exactly how Google plans on supporting HTC but said "we will make sure they don't lose."

• Apple, for its part, isn't losing any steam on the earnings front. The company this afternoon reported a profit of $7.31 billion, or $… Read more

A public interest group called Consumer Watchdog has filed an antitrust complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about Facebook Credits, arguing that the virtual currency used for purchases such as assets in online games is anticompetitive.

Specifically, the group objects to new terms for using the credits that go into effect Friday. The group argues in the 28-page complaint (PDF), "The new Facebook Credits terms will enable Facebook to maintain and extend its monopoly power over the market for virtual goods purchased in social games."

In addition, the complaint argues, the new terms prohibit game developers from charging … Read more

A May cyberattack that breached Citigroup's network gave hackers access to 360,083 credit card accounts in the U.S., the company revealed yesterday.

That number is higher than Citi's initial estimate, which claimed that the breach affected one percent of the bank's 21 million U.S. customers, or around 210,000.

The cyberattack, which occurred on May 10, compromised the company's online account system, allowing the attackers to access names, account numbers, and contact information for the affected customers. However, Citi said that Social Security numbers, birth dates, card expiration dates, and card security codes … Read more

The payment service WePay launched a new online ticket store this week that competes in some ways with EventBrite. It's a logical addition to the growing service. But that's not what's interesting about WePay.

I'm seeing payment services companies like this popping up a bit more than I would have expected, given the serious regulatory and security issues involved in handling money in bulk (see Dwolla and Venmo). Talking about that with WePay founder Rich Aberman led to a fascinating discussion about how the company hopes to keep its fraud rate low enough to stay in … Read more