David Marcus uses credit card hacking to plug PayPal

It seems executives of big online payments companies aren’t immune to hacking scams.
But while such an unfortunate incident would be at best a headache for the average consumer, it offered PayPal’s top executive a convenient marketing opportunity.
PayPal President David Marcus’s credit card information was swiped after the Silicon Valley executive went shopping in the UK. Marcus tweeted Monday that the thief racked up a “ton of fraudulent” charges.”
And without skipping a beat, he lunged at the opportunity to tout his own company: “Wouldn’t have happened if merchant accepted PayPal.”
He went on to tweet about PayPal’s superior security.

This is a particularly high-profile time for PayPal, which just redesigned its website, revamping it for superior mobile viewing.  PayPal is in the midst of a global hackathon tour and in the throes of merging with Braintree, the mobile payments platform PayPal acquired last year. And the company ended up in the spotlight last month when activist investor Carl Icahn last month proposed a spinoff of PayPal business from parent company eBay– a suggestion eBay dismissed.
Marcus said the stolen account was an EMV card — which stands for Europay MasterCard Visa. These cards include smart chips that use an embedded microprocessor instead of a magnetic stripe to store cardholder data, and are supposed to be more secure than the average piece of plastic. They have received quite a bit of attention since the massive data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus. Beginning in October 2015, the US will become the last major market to shift to EMV, and retailers will replace the old swipe machines with a slot to enter a card and pin number, the Wall Street Journal reports.  But Marcus’ card theft adds to existing concerns about whether EMV cards are indeed an answer to credit card insecurity.
But for all of Marcus’ plugs, PayPal hasn’t been immune to hackers either. Hacking group the Syrian Electronic Army this month took responsibility for breaching and defacing the websites belonging to PayPal UK and eBay. And last year hacking group Anonymous claimed responsibility for the high-profile 2010 hacking of PayPal accounts and passwords.
Marcus’ credit card theft drew reaction from some Bitcoin fans who called on PayPal to start accepting the virtual currency. Some media reports have speculated that Marcus is ready for such a move, but last year PayPal executives, in an interview with this newspaper, said only they would “look at” the possibility.