Finextra Research: Latest fintech news, analysis, interviews, features and opinion by industry experts

Handelsbanken and EDB launch card blocking service

Handelsbanken has teamed with EDB Business Partners to enable Norwegian customers to block the use of their cards in certain geographic areas.

25 June 2009

News/Card fraud

PCI standards board asks PwC to review secure tech options

The PCI Security Standards Council has asked PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to carry out research into technology that can be used by merchants, service providers and processors to secure cardholder data.

24 June 2009

News/Card fraud

Gang arrested for buying own music online with stolen cards

UK police have arrested nine people accused of using stolen credit cards to buy music they made themselves from iTunes and Amazon, fraudulently netting around $300,000 in royalties.

11 June 2009

News/Card fraud

UK e-tailers don't understand PCI DSS - survey

Around 60% of UK online retailers do not know whether they are in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), according to a survey from Sage Pay.

02 June 2009

News/Card fraud

Savvis faces bank lawsuit over CardSystems data breach

Merrick Bank has launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Savvis, accusing the vendor of erroneously telling it that CardSystems Solutions complied with Visa and MasterCard security regulations less than a year before the payment processor's systems were hacked, compromising up to 40 million credit card accounts.

26 May 2009

News/Card fraud

New York ATM skimming gang steals $500,000

New York police are on the hunt for a gang of thieves accused of using ATM skimming technology to steal account details and PIN numbers before withdrawing over $500,000.

13 May 2009

News/Card fraud

Booming underground economy fuels online threats

Separate studies published today by Symantec and Gartner show how the widespread use of phishing and malware kits, and the increasing sophistication of organised criminal groups, have led to an unprecedented number of active threats. Meanwhile, competition amongst criminals has led to dramatic falls in the price of compromised data in the underground economy.

14 April 2009

News/Card fraud

Banks team with new UK e-crime unit to make first arrests

The UK's recently-formed Police Central E-crime Unit (PCeU) has made its first arrests, in cooperation with a "virtual task force" that includes members of the financial services industry. Nine suspects were arrested in southeast London yesterday in connection with money laundering, computer misuse and conspiracy to defraud using malware designed to compromise online bank accounts.

09 April 2009

News/Card fraud

London card cloning gang accused of stealing £3.5m

A gang of five fraudsters who ran a global credit card cloning ring out of a London flat stole £3.5 million in just a few days, a court heard yesterday.

07 April 2009

News/Card fraud

Google search reveals stolen credit card details

The credit card details of 19,000 Brits have been found on a cached Google page, where they had been accidentally published by fraudsters.

31 March 2009

News/Card fraud

Queensland investigates combined bank and transit card

The Australian state of Queensland is seeking partner banks to develop a combined contactless transit and payments card.

27 March 2009

News/Card fraud

Israeli hacker suspected of $10m theft

Ehud Tenenbaum, a notorious Israeli hacker arrested in Canada last year in relation to the theft of around $1.5 million, is now suspected of breaking into the systems of four US institutions as part of a global "cashout" conspiracy that resulted in the loss of at least $10 million.

26 March 2009

News/Card fraud

RBS selects Gemalto for EMV migration in Indonesia, Taiwan and India

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has contracted Gemalto to assist in the migration from magnetic stripe to EMV credit cards in Indonesia, Taiwan and India.

24 March 2009

News/Card fraud

Australian ATM skimming gang nets $500,000

Australian police are hunting thieves suspected of stealing over $500,000 from ANZ customer bank accounts using details obtained from a skimming device attached to a cash machine in Melbourne.

24 March 2009

News/Card fraud

Online banking fraud soars in UK

Online banking fraud losses in the UK reached £52.5 million in 2008, a whopping 132% increase on the previous year's tally of £22.6 million, according to annual fraud figures released by payments association Apacs.

19 March 2009

News/Card fraud

Visa pulls Heartland and RBS WorldPay from PCI DSS compliance list

In the wake of revelations about major data breaches, Heartland Payments Systems and RBS WorldPay have been removed from Visa's list of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant service providers.

17 March 2009

News/Card fraud

German police shut hacking forum

German police have shut down an Internet forum used by cybercriminals to share malicious software and password stealing programs.

06 March 2009

News/Card fraud

Bulgarian hacker sentenced to four-and-a-half years

A Bulgarian man known colloquially as The Hacker, has been given a four-and-a-half year jail sentence for masterminding a criminal gang that milked millions of dollars from US credit card accounts.

25 February 2009

News/Card fraud

Citi re-issues cards following merchant breach

Citigroup has started sending replacement credit cards to customers whose accounts may have been compromised in the massive Heartland Payment Systems breach, the Associated Press reports.

23 February 2009

News/Card fraud

Police make first arrests in Heartland breach case

US police have made the first three arrests linked to the Heartland Payment Systems data breach.

16 February 2009