The Berlin Group, a-European payments interoperability coalition of banks and payment processors, is pushing a single standard for API access to bank accounts to comply with new regulations on freeing up customer data under PSD2.

Official figures of aggregated data published by technical body EMVCo show that by the end of 2016, the number of EMV® payment cards in global circulation had increased by 1.3 billion in the previous 12 months to a total of 6.1 billion.

For the second time in three years, hackers have installed malware on POS systems at US discount chain Kmart and stolen customer credit card data.

In the Nordic region, both businesses and consumers have inadequate IT security. Danske Bank is now attempting to do something about this with its “Keep it safe” project, which is intended to improve IT security in the region by means of concrete advice and tests.

Wonga, a prominent UK payday loan firm, has warned 270,000 of its customers that their accounts may be at risk following a data breach.
The company reportedly discovered the breach last week but only realised that customers' account details were at risk on Friday 7th and then began notifying them the following day. More than 245,000 UK customers have been notified in addition to 25,000 in Poland.

American online brokerage Scottrade says a mistake by third party vendor Genpact resulted in the sensitive information of around 20,000 customers being left exposed.
BPO outfit Genpact uploaded a dataset containing commercial loan application information from a B2B unit within Scottrade Bank to one of its cloud servers that did not have all the security protocols in place.

Payment professionals are well aware of the benefits of payment technologies now entering the marketplace, but concerns about cost and compatibility may delay their implementation, according to Managing Payment Technology Innovation, a study conducted by Capital One and the NAPCP, the professional association of the commercial card and payment industry.
Based on a survey of 136 payment professionals from 21 sectors, the study revealed that payment professionals appreciate the heightened security, streamlined operations, enhanced analytics, lower costs, and, in some cases, additional revenue to be gained from these technologies. However, survey respondents identified three major barriers to implementation: insufficient information to make an informed cost-benefit analysis; insufficient leadership commitment; and lack of knowledge about sophisticated and cutting-edge payment technologies such as blockchain and tokenization.