Barclays Bank PLC revealed it is testing a cardless cash program in the United Kingdom. The initiative uses smartphones and near field communication (NFC) technology in lieu of plastic cards and is in pilot at 160 Barclays ATMs. The number of participating ATMs is expected to grow to 500 in January 2017, Barclays representatives stated.

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As retailers brace for the holiday shopping crunch, the 2016 Pre-Holiday Retail Cyber Risk Report, dated Nov. 28, 2016 and published by Bay Dynamics, found that most security specialists take a business-as-usual approach to peak retail season. Findings are based on an independent survey conducted by Osterman Research of 134 security professionals at U.S. retailers with 2,000 or more employees.

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The National ATM Council Inc. and 13 independent ATM operators will get their day in court with Visa Inc., Mastercard and assorted card-issuing banks. The U.S. Supreme Court's Nov. 17, 2016, reversal of the defendants' appeal will enable the class action lawsuit to be tried in Washington D.C.'s Federal District Court. NAC and ATM operators seek injunctive relief and illumination of rules related to debit card network pricing. Plaintiffs are challenging current pricing mechanisms that Visa, Mastercard and affiliated issuing banks use for setting ATM access fees, claiming the schemes are both anticompetitive and a form of price fixing.

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Wakefield, Mass.-based NFC Forum introduced a tag certification program Nov. 15, 2016, a global initiative aimed at defining common operability and compliance parameters for a diverse group of near field communication (NFC) tag applications. Two working groups within the forum will manage the program; The Internet of Things Special Interest Group (SIG) and Compliance Committee are soliciting guidance from existing and prospective NFC Forum members in the wide-ranging initiative, the forum stated.

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Vantiv Inc.'s planned acquisition of Moneris USA for $425 million is the latest conquest for the Cincinnati-based payments acquirer. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2016, will be subject to final approval and anti-trust clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice. Schaumburg, IL-based Moneris USA, a subsidiary of Moneris, a Canadian company jointly owned by BMO Financial Group and Royal Bank of Canada, processed nearly $12 billion in payment transactions in 2015, representatives stated, Moneris representatives states.

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The cannabis supply chain hailed California's passage of Proposition 64, an initiative aimed at legalizing adult marijuana use. The ballot measure achieved a 56 percent majority Nov. 8, 2016, prompting state legislators to issue preliminary compliance guidelines for the fledgling cottage industry. The California State Board of Equalization (BOE) immediately exempted some forms of medical marijuana from sales and use tax. Marijuana buyers will pay a 15 percent excise tax beginning Jan. 1, 2017; growers' taxes are in development, the BOE stated.

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The National Retail Federation projected a 3.6 percent increase in 2016 retail holiday sales, and leading security firms are warning companies to protect their data. Recently published reports by Tripwire Inc. and Verizon Inc. suggest retailers can do more to safeguard physical stores and ecommerce sites. The Tripwire study, published Oct. 10, 2016, surveyed 763 information technology (IT) professionals, 100 of whom were in the retail sector. Verizon's 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report analyzed over 100,000 incidents that occurred in 2015, including 3,141 confirmed data breaches. Tim Erlin, Senior Director of IT Security and Risk Strategy at Tripwire, cautioned IT professionals against complacency. "The increased scrutiny of retail cyber security in the wake of major breaches has forced organizations to focus on securing their environments, yet these survey results show that there's still a lot of room for improvement," he said.

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Shoppers, retailers and cybercriminals are no longer waiting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to get into the holiday spirit. Security analysts saw a spike in legitimate and fraudulent retail transactions throughout the third quarter of 2016, a traditionally quiet period. The attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated, experts warned. Chief among their concerns is the use of artificial intelligence and social engineering to mimic legitimate customers, which can lead to other crimes. "The challenge for businesses is that if fraudsters behave more and more like genuine customers, and automated bot attacks are testing identity credentials on a mass scale, what hope is there of detecting the genuine good transactions from the sea of bad ones?" wrote Alisdair Faulkner, Chief Products Officer at ThreatMetrix, The Digital Identity Company.

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Prepaid products have once again found themselves in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's crosshairs. In a previous breaking news story published Oct. 7, 2016, The Green Sheet reported on the CFPB's new guidelines for reloadable prepaid debit cards, the latest in ongoing efforts to protect unbanked and underbanked consumers who rely on prepaid products in lieu of traditional banking relationships. In addition to its new rules, which place caps on consumer liability for lost and stolen cards and require prepaid card issuers to provide "Know Before You Owe" disclosures, the CFPB criticized prepaid service providers in its monthly complaint report, published Oct. 25, 2016.

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