Links in “Credit/Debit Cards”

Amazon’s Credit Card Marketplace, a new credit card application portal, is seeing low success rates from the credit unions participating in its pilot program. Two possible reasons have been identified:  1) Credit unions are putting up too many barriers between the “Apply Now” button and the card approval, and 2) The fact that many of the applicants who persisted through the approval process didn’t meet underwriting standards. [1/9/15]

Expect fraudsters to speed up efforts to steal magnetic strip and PIN data while they can still be used in counterfeit card fraud ahead of the EMV roll out. That's one of several fraud trends predicted for 2015 in this post. [1/6/15]

Is your institution involved in credit card processing? If so, your new year will begin with a new set of requirements. Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) version 3.0 goes into effect Jan. 1, 2015 and institutions are expected to be on board. [12/31/14]

A report issued by the Payment Security Task Force recommends a layered approach to protecting the security of card payments that includes a combination of chip technology, point-to-point encryption, and the use of tokenization to replace account numbers. [12/17/14]

The CFPB has released its annual report detailing trends associated with college credit card agreements. While a 70% decline in the number of agreements since the 2009 disclosure requirement were passed may seem promising, the CFPB's findings indicate a shift to less regulated banking products. [12/16/14]

Merchant reluctance to invest in the technology and other obstacles are being steadily overcome, and the "EMV train has finally left the station and is building up steam." [12/15/14]

The CFPB has announced a research pilot with American Express to gain insight into saving habits among prepaid card users. Director Cordray is hopeful that this study will improve the CFPB's capacity to empower consumers to make better informed financial decisions. [12/15/14]

At yesterday’s board meeting, NCUA approved a final rule that will permit federally insured credit unions to modify or refinance a mortgage loan without obtaining a new appraisal if no new funds are being advanced or if there is a new advance with adequate collateral protection. The Board also approved a budget of $4+ million for the Stabilization Fund, which represents an 8.9% reduction over the 2014 budget and the establishment of an agency working to review membership and secondary capital issues. [12/12/14]

Study finds the projected number of U.S. bank branches equipped to allow consumers to walk out with activated cards in hand to grow from 14,000 this year to 28,000 in 2015. [12/10/14]

EMV is going to increase card fraud in the U.S., which accounts for 25% of global card volume, but attracts 50% of all card fraud. [11/19/14]