visas

Visa, Mastercard fail Web shoppers again

commentary Internet shoppers once again have reason to question whether Visa and MasterCard are the best means for buying online.

People have taken to Twitter and online forums to express shock about a compelling expose published in The New York Times on Friday. The story focused on an online retailer with a dubious history of customer service that included responding to complaints from unhappy patrons by allegedly threatening their lives. The newspaper reported that Vitaly Borker, a resident of New York, had generated so many complaints from selling eyewear on his site, DecorMyEyes.com, that all the negative comments had … Read more

AT&T, Verizon to turn phones into credit cards?

AT&T and Verizon Wireless are teaming up to turn your cell phone into a credit card, according to a story published by Bloomberg on Sunday.

The nation's two largest cell phone operators are forming an alliance with the credit card company Discover Financial Services and global bank Barclays to create a new service that could displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, the news agency reported. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are believed to be equal partners in the venture, with T-Mobile--the fourth largest wireless operator in the U.S--holding a smaller stake, Bloomberg also reported. … Read more

Easy iPhone jailbreak

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Easier way to jailbreak an iPhone? Windows Phone 7 devices shipping soon Pocket Camcorder includes 3D webcam, no glasses required AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile team up to challenge Visa and Mastercard Barnes & Noble's new store experience will include Nook E-readers for demo display

iPhone case: Anywhere Visa payWave is accepted

As if making money magically disappear from your bank account wasn't easy enough, DeviceFidelity's new In2Pay case, which will let iPhone users make contactless transactions on Visa's payWave system, will turn you into the Dumbledore of mobile payment.

The case is being developed by DeviceFidelity and will let your iPhone play nice with the company's existing In2Pay microSD card, which gets placed in the protective case. You'll just wave your iPhone at any Visa payWave terminal, which can already be found at some 32,000 retailers, and voila, you've made your transaction. It will … Read more

Visa targets online marketing 'scam'

Visa, one of the world's largest credit card companies, is taking aim at "scam" marketing practices that were quietly used by some of the Internet's largest retailers in recent years.

Retailers will no longer be able to allow third parties to charge a customer's card without the card owner re-entering credit card information, Visa said Tuesday. This is Visa's response to one of the biggest scandals to rock online retailing in years.

Last year, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation launched an investigation after learning that thousands of consumers had … Read more

Visa buys CyberSource for e-commerce security

Visa said Wednesday that it will acquire CyberSource, which provides electronic payment and e-commerce security software, for $2 billion.

The CyberSource price tag works out to $26 a share. CyberSource closed at $19.44 on Tuesday. The e-commerce security player has more than 295,000 merchants in its network (CyberSource and Authorize.net).

Visa said it will take CyberSource's products and services and sell them throughout its network, improve its fraud detection capabilities, and grow the customer base. CyberSource CEO Michael Walsh will continue to run the company as a part of Visa.

This story, under the headline "… Read more

Security researchers knock 'Verified by Visa'

The "Verified by Visa" credit-card authentication system has come under criticism from Cambridge University researchers, who say it is training online shoppers to adopt risky security habits.

The feature, which is used to authenticate online financial transactions, confuses people by not displaying security cues, security engineering researchers Ross Anderson and Steven Murdoch said in a paper (PDF) published Tuesday.

The protocol underlying Verified by Visa, as well competitor MasterCard's SecureCode service, is 3-D Secure (3DS). The protocol is implemented as an iframe pop-up box, said Anderson. The pop-up does not display any commonly used markers, such as … Read more

Q&A: Visa dips a toe into the Hadoop pool

As cloud computing edges its way into the enterprise, the open-source Apache Hadoop project may well prove to be the poster child of the movement. Hadoop effectively gives enterprises the power of Google or Yahoo Web indexing for free, or for the cost of a CloudEra subscription if you want to involve Hadoop's core developers in your rollout. Credit card giant Visa is an early corporate adopter of Hadoop, and points to a bright future for the open-source project.

I caught up with Visa's Joe Cunningham, head of the technology strategy and innovation group, to talk about the … Read more

YouTube finds new place for ad spots

YouTube is trying to make good use of some of the most valuable real estate on its music videos.

Anyone clicking on music videos at the site may notice a Visa logo inserted in the click-to-buy overlay that appears at the bottom of the video.

The spot is a choice position for brand advertising and is reflective of YouTube's continued efforts to find new--and hopefully profitable--advertising methods.

YouTube has long said that there won't be one way to turn the Web's largest video site into a profitable venture. Google, YouTube's parent company, has launched numerous ad … Read more