Tag: payment
The Business Benefits Of Offering Faster Payments
Twitter confirms that paid-for Pro accounts are on the way
Microblogging phenomenon Twitter has famously had difficulty monetizing its service. Recently, it added small, unobtrusive text ads, and now the company has confirmed that it’ll be offering paid pro accounts in the near future.
Founder Biz Stone confirmed the rumours to Business Insider, who suggest some of the features that might be offered for a price. A way to verify who really owns an account, a way to find out what people are saying about a company, and better analytics are all on the cards.
Freeloaders can rest assured, however, because Stone also confirms that there will always be a free version of Twitter available to businesses and individuals. The new features for sale will be solely add-ons. As for how much they’ll cost, well, we’ll have to wait and see.
(via Business Insider)
Biggest data breach ever at Heartland Payment Systems – 100 million transactions at risk
Although we’ve seen some whoppers in the UK, you can always count on the Yanks to do things bigger and better. One payment processing company, the brilliantly-named “Heartland Payment Systems” processes transactions for a quarter of a million businesses in the USA and has found some monitoring software on its servers, sending data to an external machine.
“We found evidence of an intrusion last week and immediately notified federal law enforcement officials as well as the card brands. We understand that this incident may be the result of a widespread global cyber fraud operation, and we are cooperating closely with the United States Secret Service and Department of Justice.” said Heartland president Robert Baldwin
In the USA, unlike the UK, companies have to disclose when data breaches occur. It’ll be interesting to see if Europe implements a similar law, but the UK government is opposed to such a move.
(via Out-Law.com)
Related posts: WPA Wi-Fi security gets cracked | Security watchdog the ICO is currently looking at 277 “data breaches” in the UK
UPDATE: Stroppy Apple threatens to close iTunes in MASSIVE SULK over royalty payments
There are two very important financial rulings being voted on today. One is something to do with banks and mortgages and the world not ending, which we couldn’t care less about and certainly don’t intend trying to understand.
The other is to do with Apple and the amount of royalties it pays to record labels in return for selling their music on iTunes. Three Copyright Royalty Board judges are meeting in Washington today, to decide if Apple should be forced to boost its royalty payments from 9 cents a song to 15 cents a song for each track sold via iTunes – a 66% increase.
Apple has, incredibly, threatened to CLOSE iTunes…
