Klarna, a payment company offering micro credit for online transactions like PayPal Credit, serves consumers and merchants in Europe and the United States while preparing to launch in Australia and New Zealand. They recently announced an equity funding round raising $460 million, valuing the credit terms alternative payment provider at $5.5 billion.
The number of Klarna users in the U.S. is growing by 6 million per year.
More than 3,800 data breaches occurred in the first half of this year, a 54 percent increase from the first half of 2018. The number of consumer records compromised in data breaches increased 52 percent over this time, with 4.1 billion records compromised in the first half of 2019 and 3.2 billion of those coming from just eight breaches.
This comes as the Identity Theft Resource Center tallied the most records compromised in 2018 and highest number of data breaches in 2017 in more than a decade.
Unable to catch up to Apple, Samsung or Google Play, Chase Pay was used by less than 10 percent of Chase cardholders in the last 90 days, and the mobile app will be discontinued in early 2020.
Chase Pay launched in November 2016 and although being discontinued most of its features have been adopted elsewhere. While the mobile app is being shut down, the ability to login with Chase to pay on an eCommerce website displaying the Chase Pay logo will remain. Other Chase Pay features are available in Chase’s online banking app.
Forty-two states plus the District of Columbia have laws in place, already in effect or scheduled to take effect soon, that increase the collection of online sales tax by defining an Economic Nexus or Sales Nexus based on the number of transactions and/or the dollar value of transactions made by consumers in a given state during the year.
Visa announced their acquisition of Verifi on June 28th, about three months after MasterCard announced their acquisition of Ethoca. Both organizations offer issuer alert services that notify merchants of potential disputes before they become chargebacks. Visa’s acquisition comes over a year after overhauling their dispute process while MasterCard is in the process of doing the same.
To maintain compliance with the European Union’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), merchants in Europe will have to perform Secure Consumer Authentication on most non-recurring transactions greater than €30 within the European Economic Area (EAA) starting September 14th. Secure Consumer Authentication, or SCA, refers to consumer authentication services with two factor authentication facilitated by a dynamic code or biometric verification.
These new regulations coming into effect on September 14th will increase the use of consumer authentication programs as 3D Secure 2.0 will be the primary authentication method for meeting these requirements. SCA requires two-factor authentication and banks will decline transactions that don’t complete this authentication.
A new white paper from The Fraud Practice titled “Identifying and Streamlining Low Risk Customers or Applicants: Techniques and Benefits” is now available. This free white paper discusses the application of technology and techniques to derive signals of low or reduced risk and the benefits of identifying such orders in terms of conversion and screening costs when low risk orders or applicants can be streamlined or fast-tracked.
The National Mortgage Application Fraud Risk Index maintained by CoreLogic found a six percent increase in mortgage fraud risk in the first three months of 2019 relative to the first quarter of 2018. Applicants lying about their income have been increasingly more difficult to detect in recent years, employing tactics such as lying about employment and promotions while providing false documentation to corroborate employment claims, as well as counterfeit college transcripts and divorce decrees.
Fraudulent applicants are taking advantage of the time it takes for new employment records and information to reach traditional credit and employment data vendors. Since 2016, CoreLogic has seen consistent increases in the number of applicants or borrowers claiming a new job or promotion that occurred within the past year.
Issuing banks and financial institutions lost over $1.6 billion from stolen or synthetic identities used in credit card applications plus an additional $600 million from application fraud on demand deposit accounts (DDAs) last year. These figures were reported by Aite Group, who forecast total application fraud losses to nearly reach $2.8 billion in the United States by 2020.
It is estimated that by 2020 application fraud on new credit card accounts will cause nearly $2.1 billion in fraud losses while application fraud on new DDAs or bank accounts will cost US financial institutions $694 million.
Founded in 2000, PayNet provides a range of services and data products for leasing and commercial lending companies to make better credit granting and other decisions by understanding the credit history and risks of small and medium businesses. Equifax announced their acquisition of the company, for an undisclosed amount, on April 24.
PayNet and employees are now part of Equifax’s United States Information Solutions, the credit bureau’s largest business unit.
