The Federal Trade Commission has ordered Mastercard to start providing competing payment networks with the information they need to process debit card payments. In a proposed enforcement action announced on Friday, the FTC said Mastercard had allegedly violated a provision of the Dodd-Frank act known as the Durbin Amendment by prohibiting merchants from routing transactions over alternative networks.
The action targets “tokenization,” the technology that underpins mobile payment applications like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. When you go to make a debit or credit card purchase with your phone’s mobile wallet, the software substitutes sensitive information, including the primary number associated with your account, with a separate set of single-use “tokens.” Mastercard and Visa say the practice prevents fraud since tokens contain no exploitable information when they’re in transit. It’s only when they arrive at Mastercard or Visa’s servers, and they’re mapped back to their original account holder, that they point to someone.
According to the FTC, Mastercard has historically stopped competing networks from accessing its token vault. That means whenever consumers decided to pay with a mobile wallet, merchants had to route the transactions over Mastercard (or Visa) and pay the company's transactions fees, which are typically higher than that of its competitors. The Durbin Amendment calls for banks to support two competing payment networks on all debit cards. It was a provision Congress introduced to promote competition among networks. The FTC didn’t say if it reached a similar agreement with Visa.
“While we are taking these steps to bring this matter to a close, there should be no question that tokenized transactions provide an increased level of protection to both consumers and merchants,” Mastercard spokesperson Seth Eisen told Bloomberg. “This focus on security guides our efforts in a highly competitive market and provides the incentive for us to continue investing in innovations that promote the peace of mind every person expects.” Eisen added Mastercard would “continue to work to update our processes to comply with the consent order and provide even greater choice.”
The FTC plans to collect comments from the public before voting to finalize the order against Mastercard.
OPPO announced the Find X2 Series of smartphones back in March and now the full range consisting of the premium flagships Find X2 and X2 Pro are finally on sale in the UK, along with the world’s thinnest and cheapest 5G handsets, the Neo and Lite. Join us after the break to see OPPO’s pre-order […]
Come comment on this article: OPPO’s Find X2 Series is finally on sale from these networks and retailers
The UK’s decision to allow Huawei gear in its 5G networks may be short-lived. Officials talking to the Financial Times (via The Verge) say the UK government is planning to gradually phase out use of Huawei equipment in 5G networks, eliminating it ent…
Engadget RSS Feed
One of the major concerns about Huawei from the US government has been their involvement, direct or indirect, in spying on users and using their networking equipment to enable spying. That’s obviously a pretty big concern with some info that comes out of China, and that’s done more than a little damage to Huawei’s reputation […]
Come comment on this article: Huawei supposedly helped North Korea build out their cellular networks
There's bound to be a lot of changes, both big and small, at 21st Century Fox now that Disney's acquisition of the media giant is completed. One of those is the shutdown of FX Networks' Plus subscription service, which it launched with Comcast back i…
Engadget RSS Feed
With Android Pie, Google instituted a more heavy-handed approach to how apps can scan for WiFi networks. That irked some developers in some very legitimate use cases, since the limit effectively broke how some apps worked if they relied on multiple WiFi scans. Google isn’t backing down from that, either. Those WiFi scanning limits are […]
Come comment on this article: Android Q will heavily limit apps’ ability to scan for WiFi networks
It looks like the Canadian carrier market is set to finally get another competitor — Freedom Mobile, formerly known as Wind Mobile, is finally getting LTE. Initially, only the LG V20 and ZTE Grand X4 will work on the network, and only in Toronto and Vancouver.
The post Canadian cellular firms face new competition from Freedom Mobile’s LTE networks appeared first on Digital Trends.
One of the reasons corporate users and the privacy-minded rely on VPNs is to control access to their networks and (hopefully) not expose secrets over insecure connections. Today Juniper Networks revealed that some of its products may not have been li…
Engadget RSS Feed
Google’s Smart Reply, a new feature rolling out to Inbox on Android and iOS, uses artificial intelligence to generate possible responses to email messages. It’s surprisingly perceptive.
The post Google's Smart Reply for Inbox uses neural networks to generate possible email responses appeared first on Digital Trends.