Credit Cards Online Information

JENNIFER, THE ASSISTANT Jennifer treasurer at ABC Corp. in New Orleans, opened an e-mail from a former colleague who no longer worked for the organization. The e-mail read: "Hi Jennifer, there should be a refund of $716 on my old corporate Visa card from the IP Conference. I paid for, but did not attend, the conference and did not turn in the charge to ABC for reimbursement. Can you have Visa issue a refund check to me? Thanks very much for your help."

The e-mail was from Larry, a former ABC executive who had been Jennifer's boss at one time. The message seemed innocuous enough. Larry had legitimately charged a business conference to his corporate credit card, but he had canceled his registration because he left the company. Therefore, he was due a refund.

It would have been very easy for Jennifer to trust her former boss and get him the refund. Instead, because something didn't seem quite right, she chose to check on whether ABC had already reimbursed Larry for the conference.

To make this determination, Jennifer accessed Larry's corporate credit card records online and retrieved his expense reports from the accounts payable file room. The expense reports confirmed that Larry had not expensed the conference fee, but when Jennifer looked at his credit card statement, she saw a couple of odd items.

First, the most recent statement indicated that the former ABC executive had made four payments to his credit card in one month. Second, the statement was two pages long, and Jennifer knew that Larry rarely traveled for business. She scanned the charges and noted that most of them were from local vendors. In addition, none of the items looked like business charges. The charges included dinners at local restaurants, department and grocery store charges, and airline tickets for Larry and his wife that Jennifer knew were for their recent vacation.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:43 AM  0 Comments

The majority of American consumers believe it's safer to use a check or money order for online purchases but, according to the National Consumers League, that belief is mistaken.

A recent survey by the National Consumers League (NCL) found the most frequently cited fear by online shoppers is that their credit card number will be stolen - a concern expressed by 43 percent of respondents.

Fifty-nine percent said they would rather pay with a check or money order than use plastic.

Online shopping has become increasingly important to the economy in recent years. The NCL quoted U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that e-commerce totaled nearly $26 billion in 2000.

In the NCL study, 55 percent of respondents with Internet access said they placed an order online in the previous 12 months. That figure is up from 44 percent in a similar survey taken in 1999, the League said.

Contrary to popular belief, credit cards offer more protection against fraud, not less, because they offer legal remedies, the NCL insists.

If they use credit cards, shoppers can dispute charges for goods or services that were never ordered, never received or misrepresented by sellers.

The organization also said technological advances have made credit cards better suited for use on the Web. The NCL said some card issuers now offer "substitute" or "single-use" credit card numbers. As the names imply, the person's actual credit card number is not used during an online transaction, offering an extra level of security.

As part of its national education campaign, the NCL released a set of tips for safe shopping online. In addition to the admonitions about using credit cards - especially those with substitute numbers - the League offers the following advice to consumers:

- Do extensive research on the background and sales history of online merchants. If possible, obtain the physical address and phone number of the seller before you buy anything.

- Pay attention when giving your credit card information online. Only do so if there is some indication the information is encrypted, or otherwise is being sent in a secure manner. Do not send your account number or other sensitive information in an ordinary e-mail.

- Obtain and print as much information as possible about your online purchase, including a complete description of the item, total price including shipping, delivery time, warranty information, return policy and what to do if there is a problem.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:42 AM  0 Comments

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1999 NOV 19 (NB). Shopping online could become much easier for people without credit cards under a new Internet automatic teller machine plan developed by Cash Technologies Inc. [NASDAQ:CHNG].

According to Cash Technologies Chairman and CEO Bruce Korman, credit cards inhibit much of the potential in the e-commerce market. "Today nearly half of the US population, and one-fourth of those who qualify, do not have credit cards," he said.

In order to turn these cardless customers into online spenders, Cash Technologies today announced that it has reached agreements with MP3.com, [NASDAQ:MPPP], an online digital music Website, and privately held Sensar Inc., a manufacturer of "iris recognition products," to begin a pilot project using ATM cards to purchase music products at MP3's Website.

Instead of credit cards, MP3 would Sensar's iris recognition devices and Cash Technologies' EMMA (E-commerce Messaging Management Architecture) transaction processing system.

MP3 customers participating in the pilot project will be able to use their regular bank ATM card to shop securely over the Internet at MP3's Website. The use of Sensar's iris camera attached to the customer's PC will eliminate the need to send personal ID numbers via the Internet, removing the key stumbling block that has prevented the use of ATM cards on the Internet.

Korman also pointed out another possible advantage that this system has over credit cards, saying that "credit card and password fraud has victimized millions of online shoppers."

The pilot project for MP3 customers will begin during the first quarter of 2000. Participating customers will enroll at an iris- enabled ATM supplied by Diebold Inc. Thereafter, when the customer is ready to purchase products from MP3's Website, a small hand-held camera manufactured by Sensar, which plugs into the customer's PC, will take a picture of his or her iris and return the encoded information to MP3 over the Internet.

MP3 in turn will pass the information on to Cash Technologies' EMMA system to authenticate the customer and process the transaction through the ATM networks.

An approval is returned by EMMA to MP3 within seconds, the customer then can receive the requested MP3 product in the usual way. According to Cash Technologies, as far as the customer is concerned, the process is virtually as fast and as simple as using an ATM.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:41 AM  0 Comments

Cash and credit cards soon may give way to digital money--currency that can be sent over computer networks in the form of digital information. "Shopping on the Internet has prompted the development of a new kind of money," Vary Coates and Steven Bonorris, who made a study of digital money for the Institute of Technology Assessment in Washington, D.C., told the World Future Society, Bethesda, Md. They explained that it may take the form of electronic tokens stored on a computer's hard drive or on "smart" cards that can be loaded with various monetary values.

Millicents is a kind of electronic scrip that carries a signed message, a serial number, and an expiration date. Customers receive millicents from brokers and can then spend it using their modems.

CyberCoins exist as digital tokens that can be purchased from a bank and exchanged for online products that cost less than $10.

CyberCash is a system that utilizes software to create a gateway between the Internet and a credit card company's authorization network. A cybercash system keeps records of transactions and encrypts your payments.

"No one is yet sure what kind of electronic currency, if any, will most appeal to consumers," Coates and Bonorris indicated. Some enthusiasts want digital money to be just like paper money. They want to be able to "make change" electronically, have their new currency widely accepted, and have easy access to funds via computer, laptop, and smart cards. Others want electronic money to have customized features that paper money lacks. Some parents, for example, would like to give their children "conditional" digital allowances that couldn't be spent on cigarettes or liquor.

Some consumers already are using digital money. First Virtual Bank began offering it in 1994 and now has 150,000 accounts. Most Internet merchants, though, are waiting to see which of the competing electronic systems will win out in the marketplace.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:09 AM  0 Comments

Several credit unions have volunteered to let their employees test smart cards that if successful, may be offered to credit union members through CUNA Network Services.

Initial testing focused on five applications:

* My Accounts - members' direct link to credit union services including loans, online banking, and electronic bill payers

* My Wallet - e-wallet that stores everything necessary to initi-. ate an online credit card transaction

* My Profile - personal information form that holds the user's ID and automatically fills in forms where this information is requested

* My contacts - mail addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses

* My Favorites - Web addresses, login names, passwords

"I have been amazed at the level of interest credit unions have shown in smart card technology," reports Doug Benzine, new Executive VP of CUNA Network Services. "We are looking into wavs to include more credit unions in our second phase of testing."

The second phase is set to begin early in fourth quarter 2001 and last through first quarter 2002.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:08 AM  0 Comments

The event's host, Livermore Research, is one of the leading experts in the credit card industry. It uses a proven methodology to uncover and report new online developments within all the major credit and charge card issuers and it is consistently the first industry source to report new functions, updated capabilities and site redesigns.

edocs provides a complete online self-service software platform for the credit card industry and works with several leading card issuers including GE Consumer Card Services and Target. edocs' Card Manager enables issuers to offer a complete and compelling online service experience for consumer and commercial cardholders and it delivers substantial cost savings and improved customer service levels. With edocs' solution in place at an issuer's website, business and consumer cardholders can view recent activity and account status, request usage alerts, categorize transactions, turn off paper delivery and run spending analysis reports.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:07 AM  0 Comments

Chances are slim, but ONLINE HACKERS could steal your card number or, even worse, your identity.

LINDA FEDAK of Columbus, Ohio, was never a convert to e-commerce. Her husband had bought a few things online, and about a year ago she let her 15-year-old son, Daniel Getson, use her Lazarus Premier Visa card to buy a hard-to-find CD from the Web site CD Universe.

Nevertheless, Fedak was among the 25,000-plus cardholders whose cards were canceled after a hacker broke into the CD Universe data files, stole 300,000 credit card numbers, and then posted some of them on the Web when his ransom demands were rebuffed.

The CD Universe security breach caused surprisingly little stir among online shoppers and e-tailers. In part that's because the hacker didn't intercept information that was being transmitted over the Internet. Instead, he found a way to break into the back-office servers where customer data was stored. "There was nothing special about e-commerce that caused this to happen," says Frank Prince, a senior analyst for Forrester Research, because it could just as easily have happened to any other type of business.

In addition, the breach affected relatively few people, and their losses so far have been fairly small. "When you look at the speed with which a hacker can move, fraud-protection systems and credit card companies can also move rapidly and limit the damage," says Preston Dodd, an analyst for Jupiter Communications.

Credit card issuers will soon be able to provide their customers with alerts and updates to make it easier for them to spot unusual activity, predicts Charles Gerlach, director of eStrategy for Mainspring, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm. If you pay your bill online, for instance, you'll see a snapshot of where your card was used.

Fedak isn't aware of any unauthorized charges on her card before it was canceled, but says she'll be going over her statements "with a fine-tooth comb." By law, she's responsible for only the first $50 in fraudulent charges. Of greater concern is whether the thief got enough information to steal her identity, which could lead to a damaged credit rating.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:57 AM  0 Comments

IN THEORY, the convenience and simplicity of online banking make it a godsend for busy entrepreneurs. Yet recent surveys show that small-company CEOs are slow to migrate their business banking online, lagging behind consumers and big companies.

A survey released in December 2004 by Forrester Research found that while small-business owners are active internet users, only 19 percent of those surveyed were actively using online banking, and just 13 percent were actively paying bills online. The "Small Business Research 2005 Study," performed by Edgar, Duma & Co., a global financial services and payments consultancy, and Collective Dynamics, a management and technology consulting firm, found that while 57 percent of responding entrepreneurs used online banking daily or weekly, only half paid their bills online; 28 percent had no interest at all in online banking. Why? The most commonly cited reason, reports John Bresnahan, director at Edgar, Dunn & Co., was concern about internet security.

"Businesses of this size are very conscious of security," echoes Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends, a website that monitors trends in the global small-business market. "Every time we have one of these scares about credit card numbers or banking records being compromised, that gives business owners pause."

Indeed, the recent security lapses at major financial institutions have done nothing to quell business owners' fears of putting their account information online. Avivah Litan, vice president and research director at Gartner Inc. and author of several studies on online security, says their wariness is understandable. "They're not nearly as well-protected in the banking world as consumers are," she says, "especially when it comes to online information theft."

Federal regulations require banks to reimburse consumers for unauthorized transfers from their accounts, says Litan. But there is no corresponding legislation that protects small businesses. "Small businesses are kind of left behind when it comes to banking," says Litan. Until new regulations appear, if banks want business owners to feel more at ease, they'll have to "make their own liability guarantees," she says.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:56 AM  0 Comments

It's an impressive list: Time Warner, Eastman Kodak, Motorola, MCI. All industry leaders with significant resources and large numbers of employees. And this past year, all of them had to tell current or former employees that their sensitive personal information had been compromised.

Some had computers stolen while others lost backup tapes, but the result was the same: Workers were potentially exposed to identity theft.

It's a danger that is not limited to this short list of top employers. There have been numerous high-profile cases where hundreds of thousands of employee, consumer and student records were lost by, or stolen from, various financial institutions, data brokers and universities.

In fact, through September there were more than 100 personal information breaches of employee, consumer or student data affecting more than 56 million people, according to a list updated regularly by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) in San Diego.

One of the largest breaches occurred at Time Warner, which announced this spring that tapes containing personal information on about 600,000 current and former U.S.-based employees had been lost by Iron Mountain Inc., a Boston-based records management and storage firm. The U.S. Secret Service is investigating.

"In the wake of the incidents of the past year involving a number of companies, we've made a decision to begin encrypting all of our backup tapes," says Time Warner spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan. Time Warner also has "changed certain procedures in terms of Iron Mountain's handling of our data," McKiernan added, but she would not discuss details of those changes, citing security concerns.

At Kodak, MCI, Motorola and other businesses, laptops containing sensitive information were stolen--the same type of problem that accounted for one-quarter of the employee record breaches that occurred this year, says Donald Harris, president of HR Privacy Solutions Ltd., a consulting firm in New York.

Such security breaches can come at a high price. In the Internet Age, one computer that is not properly protected or one hard drive that is not adequately erased can provide thieves with access to thousands of employee records--which they can use to apply for credit cards, spend money that isn't their own and wreak havoc on the lives of people whose only crime was trusting their employer.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:16 AM  0 Comments

Miller Brothers, the Doncaster-based group with 40 stores in the UK, has moved from ISDN transmission to an Internet based on-line system. It means credit applications are processed almost instantaneously with responses received within three seconds. "There is less scope for error in transferring information," explains Tony Snape, head of sales at Nova Retail Finance.

"Also, the time advantages over traditional phone or fax authorisation are obvious: applications on-line are processed in seconds while the old method of phone or fax would take two to three minutes."

"The on-line system is first rate," says Martin Foster, managing director of Hiller Brothers. "Arranging a credit scheme for a customer could not be more straightforward. Authorisations are given by Nova over the Internet and we then print off the agreement in store for the customer to sign. The system is flexible and we can see great potential to develop it further."

Black Horse Retail Finance continues to make progress on the back of its on-line system, me2u. David Scott, managing director of Plumbs comments: "We recently changed to Black Horse as we wanted an Internet-based credit system that was easy to use, gave us a quick response and is reliable."

Apart from speed and efficiency on-line credit systems can have other benefits. As Hr Scott says: "Me2u has also increased our finance income."

With its ability to take the majority of the customer information straight from the retailer's Epos system (thus saving duplicate entries for credit), Black Horse's FastTrack service really gave on-line credit authorisation a shot in the arm. So successful has FastTrack been that director of retail finance, Graham Field, reports: "Its been three years since we first introduced FastTrack and we're now approaching 200,000 applications being processed through it. It's now a proven, robust system."

Significant progress has also been made in on-line processing by Halifax Cetelem. "Our ORCA apply on-line processing application has been welcomed in the industry for the speed, accuracy, and efficiency it gives to credit applications in store," says George Taylor, sales and marketing director of Halifax Cetelem.

"Since its launch in February this year take-up among retailers has been rapid, to the point where we are currently processing 70% of our applications on-line and forecasting an increase to 80% through 2003."

# posted by Medical Information : 3:16 AM  0 Comments

Introduction

While looking for better ways to publish a newsletter online, this writer, who designed and wrote software in a previous career, invented what looks like a new tool for online commerce. This article outlines fundraising possibilities of this "smart codes" design for computer-controlled money, with financial accounts that can reproduce without limit, inheriting options and services and forming family trees. Believing that this approach may be a fundamental advance that should not be patented and owned exclusively by one person or company, I published it online for anyone to use, and am encouraging open-source software development.

This article focuses on fundraising--on making it convenient, engaging, and rewarding to donate as much or as little as one chooses. The details needed to do everything described here are already published at http://www.MicropaymentSmartCodes.com. But that site looks less at fundraising than at how musicians and other artists could use smart codes to market their work independently through social networks worldwide--allowing friends, supporters, and other donors to buy bulk prepaid downloads as gifts, for sharing in smart Web links through networks, so that most downloads can be free while the artist still gets paid for them. (For our readers, the same system could also make medical-journal articles more accessible, as journals could easily sell thousands of downloads at a time to third parties who could market them effectively to small organizations and others now excluded because they are not part of a big university, corporation, or other institution.)

This article considers four fundraising scenarios:

I. Instant Web pages automatically born with the ability to accept payment by credit or debit cards and in many other ways--regardless of whether or not an organization already has a presence on the Web;

II. Allowing anyone to reward good work online by giving large or even very small online donations by using a single payment code, and with almost no transaction cost:

III. Direct links from music to practical ways of getting involved; and

IV. Turning an individual donation to an historically important organization into a collectible investment as well--creating digital collectibles, which could add an entirely new incentive to conventional fundraising appeals.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:15 AM  0 Comments

Worried about making credit card purchases over the Web? A batch of new companies wants you to send cash via e-mail instead. It's called the direct-payment industry -- and the big banks and portals are getting in on the action.

Standing at the podium during a recent presentation, Peter Thiel held up a $20 bill. Waving it high in the air, Thiel, co-founder of an online payments company called PayPal, asked the 200 "futurists" assembled for the 2000 Foresight Conference, "Would you like this money?" After the resounding chorus of yesses died down, he polled the audience about when they would like to receive it, and how. The answers -- that they wanted it now and they wanted it with no strings attached -- came as no surprise to Thiel, whose wildly popular service allows anyone with an e-mail account to send cash over the Internet to anyone else with an e-mail address.

Thiel's $20 bill gambit had a simple purpose: to demonstrate the power of instant cash. "People go nuts over money," says Thiel. "It's amazing how it gets people's attention." But it also made a larger point, demonstrating the case for PayPal and the gang of copycat services that have spontaneously generated over the last year.

Launched in October 1999, PayPal signed up 1,000 users in its first month and today has more than 4.5 million. Riding on the success of eBay -- 50 percent of whose users now accept PayPal -- it bills itself as the fastest-growing financial application in the history of the Internet. Originally an independent upstart, it's now owned by once-rival X.com, and its Web site is already the No. 1 visited site for personal finance, garnering 10 percent of all traffic in the category. Despite the rapid growth of direct pay -- also called person-to-person or p-to-p systems -- the Internet services still have not hit the radar of the great mass of consumers. Unless you're an eBay fanatic or in the consumer credit business, you may not even know about PayPal and its rivals, which include BillPoint, MoneyZap and Yahoo's PayDirect. Credit cards are still the tool of choice for most Web shoppers. Consumers spent about $53 billion shopping online last year, with nearly $9 out of every $10 covered with a credit card.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:38 AM  0 Comments

NEW YORK -- According to a just released report from Corporate Insight, credit card issuers are doing a less than stellar job in marketing to their customers using email. In following communications from the period July 1, 2005 through October 31, 2005, researchers received only 65 emails in total from the eleven firms they track. Even more surprising was that six of these firms sent four emails or less in the four month period while two firms sent none at all.

"In preparing for this research, we made sure that all of our accounts were enrolled to receive promotions, news, and announcements via email," said John Cronin, Senior Analyst at Corporate Insight. "We expected to be bombarded with emails offering all types of promotions but quite the opposite was true. Much to our surprise, nearly 75% of all emails came from just three firms and 60% from two issuers. We believe there is considerable opportunity across the board for companies to take advantage of this online channel to market directly to their customers."

"Email Marketing: Reaching Customers While Providing Card Member Control" is an in-depth look at the quality and quantity of marketing emails sent by eleven leading card issuers to their client base, and examines how each firm enables cardmembers to control the flow of deliveries to their email address on record. It includes Corporate Insight's analysis and commentary as well detailed findings and recommendations to the industry.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:37 AM  0 Comments

PERSONALIZATION

SELL DIRT TO A FARMER

Most online stores greet you with personalized sales pitches. How does a site decide what you see? Two ways. Rules-based marketing says, "If a customer puts a razor in his shopping cart, show him an ad for razor blades." Collaborative filtering, on the other hand, says, "Statistically, customers who buy razors and cat food are also likely to buy ice cream, so show him an ad for Haagen Dazs."

But neither approach is perfect. Says Steve Van Tassel, senior VP of products at NetPerceptions, "Rules are a great way to express the merchant's agenda, collaborative filtering the consumer's. Lately, Internet marketers have started combining the two, using filtering to identify groups of buyers, then using rules to push the products they want pushed.

But all that fancy technology is wasted on many shoppers. A recent study published in the Harvard Business Review found that 42 percent of online shoppers saw no benefit to personalization. The alternative: Let customers do the customizing. One buyer at an online boutique might opt to view shoes by color; another buyer might browse by style; another by season.

GETTING TO CHECKOUT

* E-commerce site design has one goal: getting shoppers to the checkout stand with lots of goodies in their shopping carts. But there are obstacles. Bad design chases away more e-shoppers than any other flaw, says Andy Cargile, director of customer experience architectures at e-commerce consultant Vividence. The worst part is that these design goofs are well-known and easily fixed.

The biggest mistake, according to Cargile: inscrutable search engine results. Roughly half of online shoppers are "search dominant," meaning they go to the search engine first to find what they want. But Cargile says search results pages on two-thirds of the shopping sites he surveyed are unsortable, unfilterable or simply unreadable.

The second big mistake: All too often shoppers can't find out shipping costs until they reach the checkout window. Buyers want to know up front how much an item really costs, including shipping. Smart sites offer links to shipping rates or show shipping costs as soon as an item hits the cart.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:36 AM  0 Comments

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- GlobalCollect, the leading Payment Service Provider specializing in online alternative payment methods to credit cards has received very positive feed back from its pilot customers of iDEAL, the new Dutch real-time banking payment method.

GlobalCollect, today announced the first results of the iDEAL pilot with two of its customers, Belbios the cinema software solution provider, and Zylom, the successful Dutch online gaming company. As a pioneer in the field of real-time bank transfers, GlobalCollect already offers payment methods similar to iDEAL in Finland and Sweden with Nordea, in Germany with online Uberweisung, in Belgium with ING Homepay and in the Netherlands with Rabo Direct Betalen. Next November GlobalCollect will also add EPS, a very popular Austrian real-time bank transfer.

Andre-Marc van der Wulp of Belbios, the first merchant to have processed a successful iDEAL pre-pilot transaction in The Netherlands says:"Real-time bank transfer payment methods such as iDEAL are very attractive, because just like credit cards, they enable an immediate authorization of the payment, but unlike credit cards, they do not have any charge-back risk." Erik Goossens of Zylom adds: "With one interface to all the relevant local real-time bank transfer solutions, GlobalCollect is enabling us to reach customers that do not have credit cards, or do not want to use them online."

Research carried out by GlobalCollect shows that merchants are likely to roll out incentives for their customers to use iDEAL instead of credit cards. Next to the security benefits, the pricing model will allow substantial reduction of transaction costs. GlobalCollect estimates that for high value transactions (over 100EUR) reduction of transaction costs could reach 80%.

Jan Manten, CEO of GlobalCollect says: "iDEAL has raised a lot of interest amongst Dutch customers as well as international customers. Our vision is to enable merchants to accept all the relevant local payment methods in local currencies through one single interface. We believe in the success of real-time bank transfers payment methods such as iDEAL and will keep on investing in the implementation of all the popular local real-time bank transfer solutions. "

# posted by Medical Information : 2:07 AM  0 Comments

A bankruptcy court Wednesday approved a two-week credit extension for struggling telecom provider Teligent [TGNT]. The move will allow the Vienna, Va.-based broadband wireless carrier to continue operations while it reorganizes under Chapter 11-bankruptcy protection.

The company filed for bankruptcy last month after failing to come up with an additional $350 million in funding, thus violating the terms of an earlier credit agreement.

Teligent is one of many competitive local exchange carriers that have gone belly-up because of intense competition, cruel capital markets and a depressed stock performance. It laid off 800 workers last month.

After the current two-week extension, Teligent said it can then ask the courts for more funding to continue operations.

IDT [IDT], a deep-pocketed seller of calling cards and long-distance service, has taken over management of Teligent and plans to combine its assets with those of ICG Communications, in which IDT acquired a stake during bankruptcy-court proceedings last year. In April, IDT purchased a 33.7 percent interest in Teligent from AT&T's [T] Liberty Media unit. >TK

# posted by Medical Information : 2:06 AM  0 Comments