Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Calling it a “sophisticated criminal effort,” Barnes & Noble Inc. on Wednesday reported tampering occurred on PIN pads at 63 of its stores in nine states. The company on Sept. 14 disconnected every PIN pad in all of its nearly 700 stores but indicated that in addition to personal identification …

Google Inc. will launch yet another new version of its mobile wallet in about a month, Google’s top executive for the product said on Monday. The latest version, which Osama Bedier, vice president of  Google Wallet and payments, referred to as “the 2.0 version” of the product, comes just short …

The carrier-backed Isis mobile-payment service debuted in a low-key launch Monday in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City with almost 1,000 merchant locations participating and its near-field communication (NFC) system workable on nine smart-phone models. Digital Transactions News counted 493 merchant locations in the Salt Lake area and 470 in Austin, for …

A senior Federal Reserve official said greater speed, efficiency, and responsiveness to consumer preferences are the central bank’s top payments priorities as it plans for the next decade. But apart from promoting open communication and collaboration among industry players, Sandra Pianalto, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank …

MasterCard is getting close to announcing an EMV-related liability shift for online and other card-not-present transactions, a network executive said on Monday. “MasterCard will have a card-not-present liability shift,” said Melanie Gluck, vice president of emerging payments at the country’s second-largest payments network. “We haven’t announced it yet, it’s under …

It looks like it’s finally going to happen. The much-anticipated, much- delayed Isis mobile-payment venture backed by three big telecommunications companies is scheduled to go live on Monday in its test cities of Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City. Now the ultimate consumers of the new system, mobile-phone users, will …

Cardholders in Mexico, not the United States, report the highest incidents of card fraud, according to a new report from Boston-based Aite Group LLC and Elkhorn, Neb-based ACI Payment Systems. Of the credit, debit, and prepaid cardholders surveyed in Mexico, where EMV cards are rolling out, 44% reported an incident …

The extent of government scrutiny of the acquiring business came into sharp relief on Wednesday as a federal official told an audience of top-level executives with processors and independent sales organizations that online transaction fraud is too high and that the executives must do more to bring it down. “There …

With its “PayPal Offline” initiative to sign point-of-sale merchants for PayPal acceptance well under way, the payments subsidiary of eBay Inc. now is turning its attention to consumers, eBay executives told analysts on Wednesday. “PayPal intends to be everywhere consumers need an easy, safe, secure way to pay,” eBay president …

Despite just 10% of U.S. merchant terminals being capable of accepting EMV chip cards today, 60% of all terminals likely will be EMV-enabled by 2015, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin also expects U.S. issuers will convert the bulk of their credit, debit, and prepaid …

With a crucial deadline just five months away, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is blanketing the country this month with press releases urging recipients of Social Security and other benefits by check to adopt electronic payment. In the campaign, which started last week, the agency is sending out releases …

The market for person-to-person payments, which has percolated on low heat for several years, is showing signs of turning up the temperature. As an example of how far the market has come, the two major P2P payments networks, Fiserv Inc.’s Popmoney and clearXchange, a system unveiled last year by Bank …

In what amounts to a reminder about an unanticipated consequence of the Durbin Amendment debit card regulations, USA Technologies Inc. (USAT) reported Wednesday that it had extended its agreement with Visa Inc. that provides the vending-machine payment network operator with favorable pricing on small debit transactions. The news wasn’t a …

It’s time for bankers to stop looking at mobile technology merely as a cost cutter and start using it to make money, said speakers at a retail-banking technology conference on Tuesday. Banks that add a variety of new services to their mobile offerings ranging from in-store bar-code scanning to expedited …

  n Online daily-deal leader Groupon Inc. followed up on its big payments announcement of last month with Wednesday’s national rollout of its Breadcrumb service, a point-of-sale system for restaurants, cafes, and bars centered on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer. n Breadcrumb itself is not a payments service, but is …

The obituaries for debit card rewards may be premature. Of the 100 largest issuers of debit cards ranked by debit purchase volume, 37 now offer a rewards program, down from 52 three years ago. But 19 issuers with $10 billion or more in assets still offer a program, despite a …

In a play for the business of what an American Express Co. executive calls “the unhappily banked,” AmEx and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday introduced their Bluebird prepaid card for U.S. customers of the world’s largest retailer. The card not only expands the consumer markets that AmEx, normally associated with …

Merchant Customer Exchange, the planned mobile-payments network by and for retailers, is more than an interchange play controlled by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to an executive whose company is represented on the nascent network’s board of directors. Stephanie Swain, senior director of financial services at electronics retailer Best Buy Co. …

The nascent market for faster funds transfers, which has been on the boil all year, heated up further this week with Fidelity National Information Services Inc.’s announcement of its real-time PayNet network. The new system, which relies on FIS’s NYCE Payments Network LLC debit switch, is live with 200 FIS …

With a major chip card standard bearing down on U.S. merchants, acquirers, and issuers, small merchants in particular could face tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in annual fraud losses they are currently protected from, a processor executive argues. Patty Walters, senior vice president for merchant products and …