News

26 Aug Mastercard to discontinue magnetic strip on cards

Posted at 09:20h in Banks & Fees, Contactless Payments, Credit Cards, Mobile Payments, New Technology, News by Eric

Mastercard is discontinuing magnetic strips on their debit and credit cards in the next few years starting in Europe by 2024 and having them completely phased out by 2033. While swiping cards aren’t going away immediately (as all cards require them currently), Mastercard will make magnetic...

17 Aug Mastercard CFO says US consumers “ready and willing” to spend more than before

Posted at 06:03h in Contactless Payments, Credit Cards, Ecommerce, News, Our Partners by Eric

Mastercard CFO Sachin Mehra told CNBC that consumer spending in the United States is expected to surpass pre-pandemic lockdown levels based on Mastercards second-quarter earnings report. Mastercard’s Q2 year-over-year net revenue rose +36% to $4.5 billion this year and was up +9% in Q1 according to...

22 Jul Canadians Experience Some Drastic Salary Increases, Benefits due to Labour Shortages

Posted at 14:36h in Inspiration, News by Eric

Approximately one in ten (~9%) of all Canadians lost their jobs in 2020 due to the pandemic. After leaving around 3 million Canadians jobless over the past year, the pandemic is proving to disrupt the labor market further – with employees taking the advantage. Employers are now...

09 Jun Mastercard Donates $1.3 Billion to aid Africa’s Covid-19 Response

Posted at 16:47h in Credit Cards, News by Eric

Tuesday, June 8th, The Mastercard Foundation announced its efforts in improving Africa’s COVID-19 response with a whopping $1.3 billion donation. How will the Mastercard Foundations' funds be used? The Mastercard Foundation’s $1.3 billion donation will be spread over three years to aid the manufacturing and delivery of...

18 May China Officially Bans Financial Companies From Offering Cryptocurrency Services

Posted at 23:39h in Banks & Fees, Cryptocurrency, New Technology, News by Eric

Today – May 18, 2021. China banned financial institutions and payment service providers from offering any services related to cryptocurrency transactions. This is China’s latest attempt to curb the digital trading market. According to Reuters, “Under the ban, such institutions, including banks and online payments channels, must...

30 Apr Pandemic accelerated: 5 payment trends for 2021

Posted at 23:00h in Banks & Fees, Business to Business, Contactless Payments, Credit Cards, Ecommerce, EMV, Mobile Payments, New Technology, News, Payments Security by Eric

The past year has been incredible for the digital and payments space. Due to COVID-19 we’ve seen a significant change in the way consumers shop and handle payments. Over half of consumers surveyed by JP Morgan last year agreed that they used digital banking tools more...

31 Mar Microsoft warns of multiple threats while cleaning up infected Exchange servers

Posted at 22:06h in Business, Data Breach, News by Eric

Four zero-day vulnerabilities were discovered by Microsoft on its Exchange Server product early January and were exploited by the Chinese threat group named “Hafnium”. A zero-day vulnerability is a security flaw that is known to the vendor but does not have a patch or update to...

12 Jun New Pandemic Scams On The Rise

Posted at 14:32h in Banks & Fees, Data Breach, New Technology, News, Payments Security, Tips and Tricks by Eric

The WHO was one of the first major organizations to warn about the increase of cyberattacks and online scams happening over the past few months. In late April WHO reported a fivefold increase in cyber attacks stating that some 450 active WHO email addresses and...

31 Jul What Businesses And Consumers Should Know About The Capital One Breach

Posted at 22:27h in Banks & Fees, Credit Cards, Data Breach, News by Eric

Yesterday, a week after Equifax reached a whopping $650 million dollar settlement from their 2017 breach, Capital One disclosed in a press release that it suffered a massive data breach exposing the personal information of about 100 million Americans and 6 million Canadians. Again, another huge...

30 Jun What is Facebook Libra?

Posted at 17:11h in New Technology, News, Payments Security by Eric

In the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably heard and seen it all over the news, but what is Libra coin? What does it do? The goal of Libra is to “enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people”. To put things...