MAG News MAG joins SRPc Board MAG President/CEO Dodd Roberts has been invited to sit on the Board of Directors for the Secure Remote Payment Council. more... MAG President Participates in Two Panels at SCA’s 2010 Payments Summit MAG President/CEO Dodd Roberts was invited to speak on two panels at the Payments Summit, which the Smart Card Alliance hosted in Salt Lake City. more... MAG Participates in Cardholder Data Protection Session MAG Merchants and the MAG President attended a brainstorming session held in Dallas concerning the early stages of development of a new data security standard. more...

Industry News AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MC With Smartphones AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile carriers, are planning a venture to displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, posing a new threat to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., three people with direct knowledge of the plan said. more... US risks becoming a global centre for card fraud A senior official at the US Federal Reserve has expressed alarm that the country is being left isolated by its reliance on mag-stripe cards while the rest of the world moves to more secure EMV-based Chip and PIN payment technology. more... Law Remakes U.S. Financial Landscape Congress approved a rewrite of rules touching every corner of finance, from ATM cards to Wall Street traders, in the biggest expansion of government power over banking and markets since the Depression. The bill, to be signed into law soon by President Barack Obama, marks a potential sea change for the financial-services industry. more... Big Merchants Pay $225K on Average for PCI Audits Getting an annual assessment to determine their compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard costs big merchants an average of $225,000, but some pay $500,000 or more and others much less, according to a new research report by Ponemon Institute LLC. more...

MAG Events Mark your calendar 2010 Annual Conference October 12-14, 2010 Irving, Texas REGISTER NOW! Outstanding Turnout at 2010 Mid-Year Conference In addition to the ever-popular merchant-only roundtable, the event featured presentations by STJ Retail Corporation on EMV deployment in Canada, and by MagTek and Magensa.Net on new technologies for securing POS transactions. more... Payment Card Brands Represented at 2009 Annual Conference More than 80 people — including representatives from American Express, Discover Network, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa — attended the MAG's second annual conference. more...