Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Having lost one brawl with Congress this year over credit cards, big banks apparently are in no mood to fight about another increasingly political issue, overdraft fees. Leading debit card issuers Bank of America Corp. on Tuesday and JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Wednesday announced major changes to their overdraft-fee …

A new data-security service announced on Tuesday by heavyweight players in payment processing and data security?First Data Corp. and EMC Corp.'s RSA unit, known as The Security Division of EMC?is expected to boost a technology called tokenization, the replacement of cardholder account numbers with surrogate numbers or “tokens.” Since the …

The rules-setting body of the automated clearing house plans to classify mobile ACH transactions under the existing WEB code rather than create a new code for such payments, at least for the short term. Mobile payments could get their own code some time after 2010. Those ideas are part of …

Merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations are paying about 10% less for authorization and back-end transaction processing services than they did in 2007, according to new study by The Strawhecker Group. But, not surprisingly, big acquirers get the best pricing, and new clients of service providers are getting better deals …

Merchants turned up the heat on banks and the bank card networks on Thursday by releasing a report showing that interchange fees in the U.S are much higher than in other countries, and arguing that policymakers in the U.S. should regulate interchange as have their counterparts overseas. “We want to …

Retailers have complained the loudest about the cost of complying with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, but comments Tuesday at a health-care payments conference indicate that medical providers also incur considerable expense to secure their card-accepting payment systems. PCI-related costs come to about $100,000 a year for …

Google Inc. has apparently fixed a weeks-old problem with its Google Checkout online-payments system that prevented merchants from processing recurring transactions, such as subscription fees. While Google says the little-publicized glitch affected only a small number of merchants, other observers say this and outages experienced by other alternative payment services?such …

Dozens of U.S. grocery-store chains added credit card acceptance in the 1990s, when consumers began asking to use the cards and merchant acquirers saw a ripe new market. Grocers acquiesced to keep their customers happy and because the payment card networks offered interchange breaks or other incentives. But not Aldi, …

Among lessons learned by Heartland Payment Systems Inc. after the massive data breach at the merchant acquirer last year: Don't necessarily hire the qualified security assessor (QSA) offering the lowest bid, says Robert O. Carr, chairman and CEO. Processors and merchants need to hire QSAs in the same way they …

Rising processing costs and Visa Inc.'s mandate that point-of-sale terminals be upgraded to do Triple-DES encryption for PIN-based debit transactions are prompting gas sellers to rethink PIN debit acceptance. Fuel sellers are talking about dropping PIN debit because of the hike in cost for authorization, says Branden Williams, director of …

With the popularity of digital content on the rise, processors are starting to see opportunity in a business that seemed moribund only a few years ago?handling transactions that average roughly $5 or less. The latest entrant, or, more properly, entrant-to-be, in this business is Google Inc., which is working on …

The biggest merchants are moving toward 100% compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, but compliance among small card acceptors remains much lower, according to second-quarter statistics from Visa Inc. None of that is a surprise given PCI compliance trends in recent years. But just how far …

While a number of technology companies have recently introduced products allowing mobile merchants to accept card payments on their handsets, a startup is demonstrating the first application that would let merchants take contactless payments on a wide variety of mobile phones. Indeed, Zenius Solutions Inc. hopes its software, called ZeniusMobilePOS, …

The money-transfer business just got a bit more competitive. Wells Fargo & Co. on Wednesday said it has added an online feature to its ExpressSend service, enabling customers to send money to seven countries from their computer keyboards at any time. “It's in response to our customers' wants,” Steve Clark, …

As the fifth anniversary of the Check 21 law draws near, the volume of paper substitute checks created by the law is in a free fall, recent data show. That, experts say, indicates the law has successfully paved the way for fully electronic clearing of check images. The number of …

In yet another move that could shake up the financial world and boost electronic payroll cards, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is eliminating paper checks for employees. Under the new payroll program, employees who don't have direct deposit will be issued a MasterCard-branded payroll card through the First Data Money Network Payroll …

Canada's Interac Association PIN-debit network this week announced a deal with the Houston-based Pulse network that will let holders of Pulse, Discover, and Diners Club cards withdraw cash at Canadian ATMs. More such deals with other networks are likely as Interac seeks to let foreigners use their cards while visiting …

Tuesday's news that Cynergy Data was filing for bankruptcy and planning to sell its assets serves as perhaps an extreme example of the fierce toll the recession is taking on independent sales organizations, observers say. Indeed, some say the ravages of reduced payment volumes, failed merchants, and squeezed margins could …

With $83 million in debt added since 2007, accounting errors, and finally the recession, the big independent sales organization Cynergy Data LLC concluded late this summer that it needed bankruptcy-court protection, according to an emerging picture of the company as it seeks to sell its assets to a private-equity firm. …

Citing the weak economy and “an unsustainable debt load,” the big independent sales organization Cynergy Data filed for Chapter 11 protection Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The Long Island City, N.Y.-based processor also said it planned to sell its assets to The ComVest Group, a private-equity firm with …