Mar 08
While Target recovers from their shocking $40 million credit and debit card record theft from last year, Visa and MasterCard have joined forces to push for a new chip-enabled card … Continue reading
Feb 25
Apple’s iPhone 5S has a fingerprint scanner, and now Samsung’s revealed a print-reading Galaxy S5. Each allows for payments to be verified using a swipe of your digits. Is this the possible future of all transactions? Perhaps, and Visa is now exploring the area too to ensure it will be ready for the possible sea-change.
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Jan 22
The latest in a line of UnCarrier tactics, T-Mobile has just announced that it’s launching a Mobile Money service—a personal finance system that uses a smartphone app and pre-paid Visa card to help people handle their cash.
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Jan 22
It seems almost ridiculous that people have to pay others just to use their own money, but that is how the world currently turns. T-Mobile, however, is of a different … Continue reading
Dec 12
Do you know of anyone who, while growing up, had a mind to make a living out of being a pro-athlete? I myself wanted to be a pro-gamer at first, but ended up as a programmer instead, at least for a while. Well, one of the most impressive eSports athletes from South Korea is in the limelight this time around, where he has been granted a US visa. Kim “Violet” Dong Hwan, has been attempting to bring his competitive StarCraft 2 career to the US for quite some time already, but to date his visa applications have been turned down pretty often, resulting in an extremely sparse tournament schedule in this part of the world.
South Korea has a mandatory military service for all males of an eligible age, and unless he received a US visa, it looked like Violet would have to retire early from his “love”. Good thing he has been granted a US visa at last, after Hwan’s manager contacted Blizzard Entertainment (StarCraft 2′s publisher), Twitch.tv and Machinima execs over a seven month period to send a 500-page application to immigration services in an effort to get that visa approved. As the end result, a P-1A pro-athlete visa was issued to Hwan aka Violet, which is the second time such an event has happened.
Korean StarCraft 2 Player Receives Pro-Athlete Visa original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Sep 16
NSA documents show spying branch and databank for international transaction monitoring
Posted in: Today's ChiliA document of information obtained by Edward Snowden has been revealed by SPIEGEL, in which the media company says the NSA is shown to have engaged in widespread monitoring of credit card transactions, payments, and banking of an international nature. Furthermore, it is shown that the intelligence agency has a dedicated branch for this called […]
Feb 27
It sounds boring, but one of the most important frontiers in technology right now is how mobile can make paying for stuff easier. And while this year’s Mobile World Congress might have been a little lacking in four-star hardware, there were some serious steps taken towards replacing your wallet with your smartphone. More »
Feb 07
Reports are coming in that in the final days of 2012 hackers were able to pull off a major scam using ATM machines and prepaid credit cards. The attack was so successful, that Visa warned all US payment card issuers to be on high alert for additional ATM cash-out fraud schemes in 2013. Sources in the financial industry and law enforcement cited by Krebsonsecurity.com say that thieves made off with approximately $9 million in the scam.
The sources claim that the attackers used a small number of reloadable prepaid debit cards to pull cash out of ATMs in at least a dozen countries. According, to the sources the crooks took approximately $9 million in only a few hours. The sources also claim that around New Year’s Eve the group struck again.
The second attack occurred on ATM networks in India and resulted in the thieves making off with a little less than $2 million according to investigators. This sort of attack is typically avoided because the reloadable, prepaid debit cards are limited to low dollar amounts being withdrawn within a 24-hour period. However, the criminals were somehow able to increase or completely eliminate those withdrawal limits for the accounts they control.
Visa says that the attacks were made possible because the hackers were able to gain access to issuer authorization systems and card parameter information. Once the hackers had access to that information, they were able to manipulate daily withdrawal amount limits, card balances, and other parameters. Visa says that in some instances over $500,000 was withdrawn from a single card within 24 hours.
[via Krebsonsecurity]
Hackers steal millions from ATMs on Christmas Eve is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Jan 16
RIM, the manufacturer of all things BlackBerry, has just announced that Visa has given their nod of approval for their NFC-based mobile payment solution which allows carriers to support payments on just about any NFC-enabled smartphone. This underlines RIM’s seriousness in getting a slice of the growing mobile payments market, where RIM’s Secure Element Manager (SEM) solution that paves the way for users to enjoy mobile payments will be made available for any device that has Near Field Communication (NFC) technology apart from their own stable of BlackBerry devices, of course.
Frank Maduri, senior director of NFC Services and Trusted Service Manager (TSM) product management at RIM, mentioned, “The approval from Visa of RIM’s SEM solution is an important step in that it will enable carriers to support Visa-issuing banks and financial institutions. We now offer carriers a robust solution with around-the-clock global support that works on any NFC-capable device and meets the stringent technology and usability guidelines for Visa.”
Hopefully this will be the beginning of something good for RIM in the build up to this January 30th’s event.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: T-Mobile Supports HSPA+ Nexus 7, Expands Nexus 4 Availability To Retail Stores, Facebook Rolls Out VoIP Calling To U.S. iPhone Messenger Users, 
Jan 16
RIM Gets Approval From Visa
Posted in: Today's Chili
Just in time for the imminent launch of BlackBerry 10, Research In Motion is announcing today that its mobile payment solution has been approved by Visa. Visa said its yes to RIM’s Secure Element Manager (SEM) solution for NFC mobile payments. In case you were wondering, RIM’s SEM will act as the back-end solution for carriers to securely manage credentials on SIM cards, which are installed in all types of NFC-capable mobile devices. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Instagram Reminds Users Of January 19 Rollback To Old Terms Of Services, Phablet Shipments Expected To More Than Double At Over 60M Units In 2013, 
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