Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Card issuers' uncertainties surrounding such issues as prepaid debit, debit card fraud, and the future flow of interchange income have led a major ATM industry trade group to form a new organization to represent issuers' interests. The Debit Council of the ATM Industry Association held its first meeting today at …

The booming market for mobile games is set to overtake that for ring tones as the largest digital-content market in m-commerce, with carrier-based billing remaining the dominant payment model for the foreseeable future. According to the most conservative projection offered by experts speaking this week at a conference on the …

Any signature-based debit card product that banks in the Pulse electronic funds transfer network may issue with Discover Financial Services Inc. will most likely offer interchange income equal to what they earn on Visa and MasterCard signature debit, the top executive at Pulse says. “Any [signature-debit] fees will have to …

Visa USA reported yesterday its total dollar volume in 2004 reached $1.3 trillion, up 17.9% from the previous year. Total sales volume, or dollars on Visa products at the point of sale, hit $1.045 trillion, an increase of 19.1%, the San Francisco-based bank card network says. All Visa-branded cards in …

Prepaid wireless service is surging in the U.S in large part because of the efforts of so-called mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), which re-sell airtime from the major wireless networks, experts said at an industry conference yesterday. Indeed, the prepaid wireless market in the U.S., counting both airtime and carriers' …

The number of Visa- and MasterCard-branded money-transfer cards issued in the U.S. will reach 1.1 million in 2006, up from 400,000 this year and just 145,000 in 2004, according to a new research study on the remittance market. The jump in the number of the prepaid cards follows the increasing …

MasterCard International reports its U.S. dollar volume on transactions on all of its products except online debit cards grew 11.5% in the fourth quarter last year, to $188.5 billion, while U.S. volume for 2004 as a whole expanded by 9.3%, to $695.9 billion. Total MasterCard purchase and cash transactions in …

First Data Corp. may have become the first third-party processor to achieve certification on Discover Financial Services Inc.'s network, but it almost certainly won't be the last as the card company uses its newly won freedom to win over issuers of the bank card brands, according to the top executive …

A Woodside, Calif.-based startup company today began commercial production of a two-factor authentication system for Internet transactions and also announced its first customer for the product. PassMark Security LLC, which was founded last year, has sold its PassMark identification system to Stanford Federal Credit Union, Palo Alto, Calif. The 18-year-old …

Peppercoin Inc. today unveiled the third version of its processing system for small-value and micropayments transactions and announced a processing deal with First Data Merchant Services, which is expected to offer Peppercoin's gateway to its base of 3.5 million merchants. Peppercoin 3.0, which adds subscription and prepaid payment capability to …

A simmering patent feud between rival biometric transaction processors BioPay LLC and Pay By Touch has taken another twist with Pay By Touch's acquisition of a patent covering check-cashing services, BioPay's core business. In a news release it issued last week, Pay By Touch claimed its competitor had tried to …

A majority of consumers who routinely pay their bills with checks are familiar with the process of accounts receivable conversion, or ARC, and better than half express no objection to the process, according to a survey conducted for the National Automated Clearing House Association, Herndon, Va. ARC is a relatively …

First Data Corp., which spent much of last year integrating its massive acquisition of Concord EFS Inc., has picked up another potentially huge source of transaction volume by winning the processing business for the new Wal-Mart/Discover card announced last week. As a result of the agreement, the Denver-based transaction-processing giant …

North American Health Plans Inc., one of the country's largest third-party administrators of self-funded health-care plans, has begun using Visa- and MasterCard-branded debit cards from Evolution Benefits Inc., an Avon, Conn.-based processor. North American, Buffalo, N.Y., began Jan. 1 issuing Evolution Benefits' cards linked to flexible-spending accounts for its own …

For all the publicity phishing has received in the past year as a rapidly growing and particularly insidious form of electronic fraud, it figures as a source of information in identity-fraud cases only 1.7% of the time when the method behind the crime is known. Indeed, online channels as a …

American Express Co. made no pricing concessions to Walgreen's Co. to keep the pharmacy giant accepting AmEx cards, a top executive says. Responding to questions from securities analysts during a conference call yesterday to discuss AmEx's fourth-quarter and year-end 2004 results, Gary L. Crittenden, chief financial officer at the New …

Discover Financial Services Inc.'s deal with GE Consumer Finance Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will lead to a huge volume boost for Discover and help the Riverwoods, Ill.-based company offer pricing to potential issuing partners that exceeds the interchange income they can get from Visa and MasterCard, an expert observer …

ClearCommerce Corp.'s hopes to better its chances of winning business by becoming part of a publicly held company played a major role in its decision to merge with eFunds Corp., according to a senior executive at ClearCommerce. The Austin, Texas-based provider of transaction gateway and anti-fraud services to Internet merchants …

PayPal Inc. saw the volume of transactions it handled in the fourth quarter last year soar 46%, to 99.6 million, over the same period in 2003, while dollar volume climbed fully 51% to $5.6 billion, according to data released this week by the online transaction processor's parent company, eBay Inc. …

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co.'s decision to roll out a biometric payment system to all 85 stores in its chain was driven by both transaction-cost savings and customer interest, a senior executive for the Charleston, S.C.-based grocer says. In related news, Pay By Touch, the San Francisco-based company whose system Piggly …