Five At Five: Marriott’s Passport Problems

Welcome to Five at Five, your late look at the day’s payments and commerce news. Today’s coverage includes the latest about the big Marriott data breach, and a new kind of a corporate appointment for Mastercard. U.S. lawmakers want to combat tech theft from China and others, New York takes on cryptocurrency and Goldman Sachs tweaks Marcus.

Marriott: 5.25M Passport Numbers in Data Breach Were Unencrypted

At the same time, Marriott said that 20.3 million encrypted passport numbers in addition to the 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers were accessed. In addition, the company thinks that roughly 8.6 million encrypted payment cards were involved in the incident, but said there wasn’t evidence that the components needed to decrypt the card numbers were accessed.

Mastercard Appoints First Chief Experience Officer

Donald Chesnut will also give issuers, merchants and other partners “a more holistic way to work with Mastercard’s products and services,” the company said.

US Senators Propose New Office to Combat Tech Theft

With the bill, the senators are aiming to organize an inter-agency strategy to combat threats of a high-tech nature to national security by China and other foreign actors.

NY Creates Cryptocurrency Task Force

Members of the group will include “technologists, consumers, institutional and small investors, large and small blockchain enterprises and academics,” according to a lawmaker.

Goldman Sachs Increases Marcus Interest Rates

Bankrate.com Chief Financial Analyst Greg McBride said that if the Fed stays on its path of increased rates, some accounts could yield up to 3 percent by the end of the year. That number was 1.5 percent only one year ago.