Photo via flickr Adam Galloway CC BY-SA 2.0
Cross-border shopping at Costco just got more complicated. News recently broke that negotiations between AmEx and Costco broke down, putting an end to a longstanding agreement between the two. Starting January 1, 2015, the only credit card available to Costco shoppers will be MasterCard. Costco has entered into a new partnership with MasterCard and its Capital One card.
Costco customers will have to use a new credit card next year. The wholesaler failed to come to a new agreement with American Express. Costco shoppers will be able to use AmEx at its stores until December 31st – after that AmEx cards will no longer be accepted. With 88 stores across Canada, Costco is one of the country’s largest retailers. The negotiation breakdown comes as a blow to AmEx, who just recently launched two cash-back credit cards.
Photo via Mike Mozart CC BY 2.0
It’s been a busy week for Home Depot, who is currently in news headlines for all the wrong reasons. After last week’s blog post, we have further details on the credit card breach that occurred at Home Depot. The home improvement retailer confirmed a breach occurred at its 2,200 stores in the U.S. and 180 in Canada. Security firms have estimated as many as 60 million accounts could be affected and lead to as much as $3 billion in fraudulent charges.
Small businesses are faced with a difficult and costly decision when it comes to credit cards: offer credit cards as a method of payment and eat the costly transaction fees that come up with, or only offer debit and cash and risk losing customers. It’s a lose-lose situation for small businesses. After another month of dismal job numbers, it’s small businesses that are the lifeblood of our economy.
It’s hard to flip open a newspaper without reading about another major data breach. Earlier this year we saw the biggest internet security breach in history. The Heartbleed bug left the passwords of up to 66 per cent of all Internet accounts vulnerable and led to 900 SINs being stolen from Canada Revenue Agency.
Photo via Mike Mozart flickr CC BY 2.0
Home Depot is the latest retailer to be affected by a credit card data breach. The home improvement retailer said it’s working around the clock to investigate, and patch up some unusual activity that took place on its network.
