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April 5, 2022

On the web

Block Says Ex-Worker Downloaded Cash App Customer Data – Law360

law360

“Financial technology giant Block Inc. disclosed in a securities filing Monday that a former employee downloaded brokerage account information from its subsidiary Cash App without permission, saying it had notified 8.2 million customers about the security incident. Block said the information included names, brokerage account numbers — which are associated with a user’s stock activity on Cash App Investing — and, for some, brokerage portfolio value, brokerage portfolio holdings and stock trading activity for one trading day.”

On the wires

April 4, 2022

On the wires

April 1, 2022

On the web

March 31, 2022

On the web

MAS and BIS Innovation Hub develop analytics platform for supervision

businesstimes

“The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub Singapore Centre have developed a prototype analytics platform that could help regulatory authorities perform more effective supervision. The Project Ellipse platform enables regulatory and other data – such as articles and news – to be integrated into a single platform, which helps authorities identify potential risks to individual banks and the banking system, BIS and MAS said in a statement on Thursday (Mar 31).”

March 16, 2022

On the web

Rising Attack Rates Show How Fraudsters Are Zeroing in on Fintechs, According to Sift Data

Digital Transactions

“Fraudsters targeted fintechs at an alarming rate in 2021, according to Sift Science Inc.’s first-quarter 2022 Digital Trust & Safety Index. The index reveals that the payment-fraud attack rate across fintechs within Sift’s network increased a whopping 70% in 2021 compared to 2020. The attack rate is defined as the number of fraudulent transactions blocked by Sift out of total transactions. The increase was the highest in any vertical in Sift’s network of more than 34,000 sites and apps. The index also included a survey of more than 1,000 consumers.”

March 14, 2022

On the wires

Feedzai Grew +40% in the Last Year and Strengthened the Global Team

Feedzai , the leading RiskOps platform, announces that it ended its fiscal year with +40% year-over-year growth in exit annual recurring revenue (ARR). With a total of 24 tier one new logos across the globe, the company also recorded no churn on core customers. Additionally, extended contracts were signed with key clients like Citi Bank in North America, Lloyds Banking Group in EMEA, Picpay in LATAM, and Cuscal in APAC.”

March 9, 2022

On the wires

March 7, 2022

On the web

Fraud Is Flourishing on Zelle. The Banks Say It’s Not Their Problem.

The New York Times

“Zelle’s immediacy has also made it a favorite of fraudsters. Other types of bank transfers or transactions involving payment cards typically take at least a day to clear. But once crooks scare or trick victims into handing over money via Zelle, they can siphon away thousands of dollars in seconds. There’s no way for customers — and in many cases, the banks themselves — to retrieve the money. Nearly 18 million Americans were defrauded through scams involving digital wallets and person-to-person payment apps in 2020, according to Javelin Strategy & Research, an industry consultant”

On the wires

March 4, 2022

On the web

Chargebacks911 Partners With Microsoft to Cut Down On Friendly Fraud

Digital Transactions

“To remedy the problem, Chargebacks911 , a post-transaction fraud-prevention platform, has partnered with Microsoft Corp. to create a service that combines data and artificial intelligence to detect fraudulent transactions, as well as friendly friend, pre-authorization and post-transaction  The new service leverages Chargebacks911’s friendly fraud analytics and Microsoft’s adaptive artificial intelligence technology, which learns fraud patterns, to optimize fraud controls and reduce losses from post-transaction fraud, also known as fraudulent chargebacks .”

February 28, 2022

On the web

Malaysia’s CIMB Could Incur Losses From Payments Glitch, Sources Say

Bloomberg

CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. said it incurred a credit loss of 280.9 million ringgit ($67 million) in 2021 due to a processing error that saw excess funds deposited in some customer accounts. The Malaysian lender, which counts sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd. as its largest shareholder, discovered the problem this year that related to a third-party remittance service, Group CEO Abdul Rahman Ahmad said in a statement, confirming a report by Bloomberg News.”

Nationwide Customers Hit by Fresh Payment Problem

BBC News

“Payments into and out of the accounts of Nationwide customers are being delayed in the latest round of disruption to hit the building society. Temporary queues have been set up on faster payments – the digital system which is mostly used to transfer money to other individuals and businesses within a couple of hours. Nationwide said the problem was the result of a technical issue. Frustrated customers have faced similar problems in recent months.”

February 25, 2022

On the wires

Mobile Payment App Scams on the Rise, ComEd and Better Business Bureau Warn Utility Customers

“The popularity of mobile payment apps like Cash App and Venmo is giving rise to incidents of scammers using these digital networks to bilk ComEd customers out of their hard-earned money. ComEd urges customers to be aware of these new scam attempts so they identify and avoid them. In January 2022, ComEd received more than 240 reports of scams from customers, a more than 150-percent increase from January 2021.”

February 15, 2022

On the web

SIM Swap Schemes Threaten Mobile Payments

Payments Dive

“This month, the FBI issued a statement warning consumers that criminals are increasingly using SIM card swap schemes to steal money, including cryptocurrencies. While the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 320 complaints on such incidents, with losses of about $12 million, over the three-year period from 2018 through 2020, it received five times that many complaints last year — 1,611 — with losses of about $68 million, the Feb. 8 FBI statement said.”

February 11, 2022

On the web

Hundreds of E-commerce Sites Booby-trapped With Payment Card-skimming Malware

Ars Technica

“About 500 e-commerce websites were recently found to be compromised by hackers who installed a credit card skimmer that surreptitiously stole sensitive data when visitors attempted to make a purchase. A report published on Tuesday is only the latest one involving Magecart, an umbrella term given to competing crime groups that infect e-commerce sites with skimmers. Over the past few years, thousands of sites have been hit by exploits that cause them to run malicious code. When visitors enter payment card details during purchase, the code sends that information to attacker-controlled servers.”

February 9, 2022

On the wires

Federal Reserve Releases Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit to Educate, Fight Fraud

“The Federal Reserve today released a Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit to provide financial institutions, consumers and businesses with an online repository of insights and resources on synthetic identity fraud…The toolkit is designed to increase awareness about this type of fraud, enable the payments industry to better identify and fight it, and foster payments industry collaboration to improve synthetic identity fraud mitigation.”

Taking Legal Action Against Financial Services Scams | Meta

“Today, as part of our ongoing efforts to enforce our Terms and protect people against abuse, Meta and a financial services company filed a joint lawsuit against two Nigerian-based individuals engaged in international financial scams through online impersonation…Between March 2020 and October 2021, the defendants engaged in phishing attacks intended to lure people using Facebook and Instagram to phishing websites with the goal of compromising their financial services accounts for profit.”

February 8, 2022

On the web

Data Breaches Remain a Nettlesome Problem, Especially for U.S. Companies

Digital Transactions

“While the number of publicly disclosed data breaches totaled 4,145 globally in 2021, a 5% decline from 2020, the bulk of those breaches occurred in the United States. Disclosed data breaches in the U.S. totaled 2,953, or 71% of the global total, according to Risked Based Security Inc. The number of breaches in the U.S. were also up for the year, increasing 11% from the 2,645 breaches reported in 2020.”

February 3, 2022

On the web

Blockchain Bridge Wormhole Suffers Possible Exploit Worth Over $326M

coindesk

“One of the most popular cross-blockchain bridges may have been the victim of a hack worth over $326 million on Wednesday…On-chain analysts called attention to an 80,000 ether (ETH) transaction from Wormhole to an address currently in possession of over $250 million worth of ETH. According to another developer , the attacker also kept 40,000 ETH on Solana, where they have been selling for other assets.”

February 2, 2022

On the web

Report: UK Afflicted by a ‘Growing Fraud Epidemic’ As Scammers Flourish

Finbold

“The House of Commons Committee’s bipartisan report on economic crime published on February 2, 2022, has alerted the UK government to a “growing fraud epidemic,” ordering them to urgently legislate against online scammers.   Despite the government having announced an economic crime plan in July 2019, the report found that there had been a 43% jump in fraud and computer misuse between June 2019 and June 2021, increasing the financial toll on consumers and taxpayers.”

A homeless man known as ‘Million Dollar’ was the mastermind behind a $500K Beverly Hills credit-card scam

MarketWatch

“Prosecutors say Jones and his accomplices contacted Amex posing as actual customers who had lost their credit cards. They then tracked the shipment of newly-issued cards using their phones, and intercepted the delivery before it reached the real customer. With their cards, they went to high-end shops in L.A., Beverly Hills and Costa Mesa and purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of luxury goods.”

February 1, 2022

On the web

EBA Launches Today ‘EuReCA’, the EU’s Central Database for Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-terrorism Financing

European Banking Authority

“The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today its central database for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT). This European reporting System for material CFT/AML weaknesses, EuReCA, will be central to coordinating efforts by competent authorities and the EBA to prevent and counter money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks in the Union.”

January 24, 2022

On the web

No Time to Relax: Data Compromises Reached An All-Time High in 2021

Digital Transactions

“Data-compromise incidents hit an all-time high in 2021, totaling 1,862, up 23% from the previous record high of 1,506 in 2017, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s Annual Data Breach Report. On a year-over-year basis, the number of the compromises increased 68% in 2021, compared to 2020. The number of breaches involving sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, represented 83% of the overall number of compromises in 2021, compared to 80% in 2020. Despite the year-over-year over increase, the percentage of breaches involving sensitive information remains well below the all-time high of 95% set in 2017.”

January 19, 2022

On the web

FBI Warning: Crooks Are Using Fake QR Codes to Steal Your Passwords and Money | ZDNet

ZDNet

“QR codes are useful shortcuts to online resources via a phone’s camera, but scammers are now tampering with them to direct victims to phishing pages and cryptocurrency scams. QR or ‘Quick Response’ codes have been connecting scanners to real-world objects since the 1990s, but got widely adopted during the pandemic as businesses moved to contactless communication and payments via QR codes on restaurant menus, parking meters and other public spaces.”

January 13, 2022

On the web

Crook Sells Access to Data Tool Used by Private Investigators

vice

“A member of a fraud-focused community on Telegram is advertising access to TLO, a data tool typically used by private investigators to obtain sensitive information on targets, including their Social Security Number (SSN), date of birth, and physical address history.”

January 7, 2022

On the wires

Fraud Costs and Volumes Remain Significantly Higher Than Pre-Pandemic for Financial Services and Lending Firms, According to New LexisNexis Risk Solutions Report | LexisNexis Risk Solutions

“LexisNexis® Risk Solutions today released the 2021 edition of the LexisNexis® True Cost of Fraud™ Study: Financial Services & Lending, the 5th edition of the report. The study examines fraud trends for the United States and Canadian financial services and lending sectors and key pain points related to adding new payment mechanisms, transacting through online and mobile channels and international expansion.”

January 6, 2022

On the web

How Cybercriminals Turn Paper Checks Stolen From Mailboxes Into Bitcoin

The Conversation

“While cybercrime gets a lot of attention from law enforcement and the media these days, I’ve been documenting a less high-tech threat emerging in recent months: a surge in stolen checks . Criminals are increasingly targeting U.S. Postal Service and personal mailboxes to pilfer filled-out checks and sell them over the internet using social media platforms. The buyers then alter the payee and amount listed on the checks to rob victims’ bank accounts of thousands of dollars. While the banks themselves typically bear the financial burden and reimburse targeted accounts, criminals can use the checks to steal victims’ identities, which can have severe consequences .”

Cryptocurrency Crime in 2021 Hits All-time High in Value -Chainalysis

Reuters

“Cryptocurrency-linked crime surged to a record high last year in terms of value, with illegal addresses receiving $14 billion in digital currencies, up 79% from $7.8 billion in 2020, according to a blog from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis released on Thursday. As of early 2022, Chainalysis said illicit addresses already hold over $10 billion worth of cryptocurrencies, with the majority of this held by wallets associated with crypto theft. Illicit addresses are defined as wallets tied to criminal activities such as ransomware, Ponzi schemes and scams.”

January 4, 2022

On the web

London’s Fintech Boom Opens the Door for Dirty Money

Bloomberg

“Now questions are swirling around dozens of EMIs regulators licensed as part of a move to boost London’s reputation as a fintech center and promote banking competition. Hundreds of regulatory, legal and corporate filings reviewed by Bloomberg sketch an unsettling picture of this new corner of the City. And they point to oversight weaknesses at the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority. Among the companies approved by the FCA, Bloomberg’s review found, are ones with executives or shareholders tied to Baltic money-laundering scandals, alleged financial wrongdoing in Russia and Kyrgyzstan, health-care fraud in the U.S. and suspected wrongdoing in Luxembourg and Australia. Dozens of firms are controlled by investors in jurisdictions far beyond the U.K., including the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. Some openly boast of doing business with high-risk customers.”

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