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NewsBriefs

accounts to initiate mobile payments at millions of merchant locations where al practice areas, including consumer
PayPal payments are accepted. PayPal stated that over 2 million merchants now and data privacy protection, financial
accept PayPal payments at their checkouts, including big-box merchants like products and services, and class ac-
Home Depot and Foot Locker, and over 7 million people use Venmo, a mobile tion and consumer litigation.
person-to-person (P2P) payment app especially popular with millennials. In
a statement posted on Oct. 17, 2017, PayPal Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready Keller Rohrback determined that if
said consumers can now use their mobile devices to initiate Venmo payments retailers using Square send promo-
"almost everywhere PayPal is accepted." tional text messages to customers
who have not given them their cell
Experts bring insights, rigor to data breach pandemic phone numbers, this may be in viola-

Reports of a second security breach at Hyatt Hotels and orchestrated attacks tion of state and/or federal law. Such
against Wi-Fi networks highlight the need for enhanced protections, security messages often welcome consumers
analysts stated. Security consultant and author Brian Krebs of KrebsonSecu- to loyalty programs they did not join.
rity, reported Oct. 17, 2017, that hackers infiltrated Hyatt's payment systems Mastercard scraps signatures,
between March 18, 2017 and July 2, 2017. An earlier breach in 2015 had com- expands tokenization, makes
promised 250 Hyatt properties in 50 countries, including five U.S. locations, he
noted. blockchain play
It's been a busy time at Mastercard.
"Organized crime groups (most notably the Carbanak gang) have been target- A flurry of news has come out of the
ing customer service and reservations specialists at various hospitality chains Purchase, N.Y.-based payments giant.
with tailored social engineering attacks that involve well-aged fake companies Specifically, Mastercard heralded the
and custom malware," Krebs stated. following: release of a blockchain ap-

Square merchants' loyalty texts under investigation plication programming interface for
business-to-business transactions;
The Keller Rohrback law firm revealed in a September 2017 blog post that it is certification of The Clearing House
investigating "telemarketing-loyalty texts from Square Inc." The firm has sever- as a provider of Mastercard-branded
tokenization services; and the elimi-
nation of signature requirements for
POS transactions beginning in 2018.
Customer service, data security
not mutually exclusive
Merchants can implement security
without sacrificing the customer ex-
perience, according to a new study
commissioned by Vasco Data Secu-
rity Inc. and conducted by Informa-
tion Security Media Group. The 2017
Faces of Fraud Survey, published Oct.
19, 2017, identifies top forms of fraud,
as well as fraud detection and mobil-
ity in financial services.

The survey, conducted online, was
geared for information security and
financial services professionals. Pri-
mary areas of inquiry included the
top forms of fraud afflicting financial
organizations, biggest gaps in organi-
zations' efforts to detect and prevent
fraud, and how to counter the surge
in mobile exploits while also preserv-
ing a frictionless customer experi-
ence.

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