Digital Transactions - Carriers also are trying to displace checks and cash wherever they can, says James Van Dyke, president of Pleasanton, Calif.-based Javelin Strategy & Research. He notes that Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. on Tuesday said it would accept only credit and debit cards for in-flight drink purchases beginning Sept. 9. Southwest’s flight attendants will use hand-held terminals from GuestLogix Inc. to handle the card payments. Read More »

Herald Tribune – SECURITY Are you risking identity theft or other problems by giving so many companies access to your credit card numbers or bank accounts each month? Some people still think so. But Bruce Cundiff, director of payments research and consulting for Javelin Strategy and Research, says the nonautomated approach is more problematic. Read More »

CitiMoney - Citi argues that the program was intended to move funds that belonged to Citi, namely attorney fees and interest awarded through litigation. The funds also involved customers’ unclaimed money. James Van Dyke, the principal and founder of Javelin Strategy & Research of Pleasanton, Calif., said stealing may be too strong a word for what happened. ” Something that egregious would result in the bank being shut down” by regulators, he said. A spokeswoman for Brown said no bank regulator was involved in the investigation. Read More »

Lloyds TSB, the large UK bank, is in the news because it reportedly combs through customer passwords to weed out those it finds offensive and changes them to something more palatable. Here’s yet another example of customer security practices have become a marketing issue. Apparently the customer’s chosen password of “Lloyds is pants” (I know, it doesn’t translate well) was changed to “No, it’s not” by a bank representative, which somehow resulted in a parody song called “I fought the Lloyds” reaching all the way to become a top 25 national hit single. Talk about unintended consequences! Let’s not think for a second that the inevitable shift to stronger passwords will help here, because numbers, letters and $pecia1 characters have long been interchanged by the tech-loving public.

I’m starting to believe that the more sympathetic a target is, the more likely they are to have an article written about them related to identity fraud risk. Problem: this approach adds nothing to the cause of public safety, and may in fact distract from it. (Survey of one: I recently blamed my elderly, ailing Shetland sheepdog for staiining the carpet, but it turned out to be our hyperactive cat who was at fault). Trivial factoids aside, data from both Javelin and the Federal Trade Commission actually shows that people are in the greatest risk during the “middle years”, during which their spending and financial obligations are highest. There are important differences in victimization profiles: African Americans and Latinos are victimized at higher rates Read More »

Mobile payments is too futuristic for most bankers and tech vendors, while mobile banking represents a questionable call to action for many mid-market institutions. But there are lots of ways to play in the mobile arena, even without spending a truckload of precious assets. For example, Read More »