Rippleshot Blog

This article was first published in Let's Talk Payments on January 5th.

The year 2016 saw the aftermath of EMV implementation impacting financial institutions, merchants and consumers across the US. Though many expected to see a number of positive benefits from EMV, those benefits didn’t include a reduction in the number of merchant compromises or fraudulent activity.

As 2017 kicks off, we’ve taken a look back at the key trends in the fraud and data breach space over the past year – what we learned and what’s to come in 2017.

Hackers are increasingly targeting the lodging and restaurant industries to steal customer card information.  According to a Trustwave study of data breaches in 24 countries, 38% occurred at hotels making it the most breached type of business.  In the last two years alone the industry has experienced several high profile breaches at well-known chains.  While the well-known chains have gathered the most attention, no doubt smaller hotels and motels are likely to have been targeted as well.  Most of those go undetected or unreported creating additional headaches for consumers whose card information has been stolen and for banks who need to mitigate the subsequent fraud losses.

This article was first published on PaymentWeek

In the last six months, we have seen these platforms compete and sometimes struggle, for market share as more retailers and tech companies introduced their respective mobile payment platforms.

As we approached the end of 2014, dubbed “the year of the data breach”, the US had experienced a record high of 783 publicly announced data breaches. You could not turn on the TV, open a newspaper or surf the internet without hearing how globally recognized organizations like Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, UPS, Target and many more fell victim to a breach. Consumers experienced data breach fatigue and started to become unfazed as breach after breach was uncovered. With the 2015 holiday season nearing, analysts are looking to see if 2014’s stretch of breaches will affect consumer shopping habits in 2015.

The race to launch the next big mobile payment application turned into a full out sprint after Apple Pay debuted in the fall of last year. The four front-runners - Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, Android Pay and CurrentC - are all competing for market share in a crowded and quickly changing payments space. Curious what the differences are between them, and which, if any, will be the answer to a growing payment card fraud problem? We break it all down, with the details you need to know: