August 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
Package delivery giant UPS has become the latest company to admit that customer payment card details may be at risk after it discovered malware at 51 of its US stores. In a statement, UPS says that customers who used credit and debit cards at 51 of its 4470 franchised sites between 20 January and 11 August are at risk. Names, postal and email addresses and payment card information may all be compromised, but UPS says that it has no evidence of any fraud, and that the malware has now been eliminated. Earlier this month the US government took the step of putting out an alert warning retailers about a new family of malware, dubbed Backoff, targeting point-of-sale systems. The UPS Store, received a bulletin from the government among many other US retailers that made them aware of the problem. As soon as they became aware of the potential malware intrusion, they deployed extensive resources to quickly address and eliminate the issue. Customers can be assured that they have identified and fully contained the incident. US merchants have found themselves under siege from hackers in recent months, with the most notable case seeing thieves use a vendor’s credentials to infect POS devices with malware and steal the details of around 40 million Target customer cards.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security Tagged with: card, card details, card information, credit, customer, customer cards, debit cards, devices, fraud, Malware, Merchant's, payment, point of sale, POS, retailers
July 22nd, 2014 by Elma Jane
Facebook has begun testing a buy button which lets users purchase products advertised on the social network. Meanwhile, Twitter is also stepping up its commerce game, acquiring payments outfit CardSpring.
Facebook users on desktop or mobile can now click a buy call-to-action button on ads and page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving the social network. Users can pay with a card that Facebook already has on file or enter new details and save them for future use or have them forgotten. No payment details are shared with advertisers. So far, the system is only being tested with a few small and medium-sized businesses in the US.
Separately, Twitter is also looking to strengthen its commerce credentials, buying CardSpring for an undisclosed fee. CardSpring provides an API designed to make it easy for developers to link digital applications to payment cards. It is expected that CardSpring’s technology will help merchants offer discounts in tweets, with customers entering their card details so that when they make a purchase at a later date, the saving is automatically applied.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: api, card, card details, CardSpring, customers, desktop, digital applications, discounts, link, Merchant's, mobile, network, payment cards, payments, product, purchase, technology, twitter
