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Proponents of same-day settlement of automated clearing house transactions are now pinning their hopes on an enhanced same-day service from the Federal Reserve that contains many elements in a proposal from ACH governing body NACHA that failed last August despite widespread banker support. The beefed-up Fed service, however, still …
Read More »Retail ATM Deployers Look for New Revenues As Interchange Declines
Interchange rates on ATM transactions are falling and may not have hit bottom yet, so independent distributors of ATMs need to look for additional sources of revenue. That is the conclusion of a recently released white paper entitled, “The Future of Interchange in the United States,” sponsored by the …
Read More »Retailer-Backed MCX Picks Gemalto as Its Digital-Wallet Technology Provider
The retailer-backed Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) mobile-payments system on Wednesday took another step toward its launch with the announcement that Netherlands-based Gemalto N.V. would provide the technology for its mobile wallet. Gemalto, which employs 224 workers at its U.S. headquarters in Austin, Texas, is best known for producing SIM …
Read More »Fiserv Enters Real-Time P2P Payments Fray with Popmoney Instant Payments
Fiserv Inc. on Wednesday announced it is adding a capability to its Popmoney person-to-person payment service that will let users send money within seconds to intended recipients. The new feature, called Popmoney Instant Payments, relies on debit-network clearing and comes as more and more processors are harnessing these networks …
Read More »PayPal Hikes Offline Merchant Count by 11% with First-Quarter Jump
Nearly 20,000 U.S. merchant locations now accept PayPal, up from 18,000 three months ago, according to data released on Wednesday in tandem with eBay Inc.’s quarterly earnings report. San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal Inc. is a unit of eBay. The roughly 11% jump in merchant acceptance for PayPal since eBay’s …
Read More »New Rivalry from Potent Players Is Moderating Prepaid Card Pricing, Survey Finds
New competition from national and regional players is helping to moderate prepaid card pricing for consumers, according to a survey released on Monday by Bankrate.com. Indeed, the majority of the 24 cards studied by the North Palm Beach, Fla.-based information service now carry no fees at all for such …
Read More »All-Electronic Payments Dominate 2012’s ACH Transaction Volumes
Boosted by more all-electronic payments, total automated clearing house network transaction volume grew 4.2% in 2012 to nearly 16.8 billion transactions from 16.1 billion the prior year, ACH governing body NACHA reported Wednesday. The value of ACH payments increased 8.8% to $36.9 trillion. WEB, an ACH code primarily for …
Read More »Judge Tells Retailer Groups To Settle Their Online Feud Arising From Interchange Settlement
In one of the stranger twists arising from the controversial settlement to credit card interchange litigation, the federal judge overseeing the massive case on Thursday gave lawyers for two feuding merchant groups a week to propose changes to a Web site that urges merchants to opt out of the …
Read More »Credit Cards, Prepaid Cards and Smart Phones Emerge as the Stars of POS Payments Growth
Aided by an improving economy, credit cards staged a comeback in 2012, edging out debit cards as the key payment option at the retail point of sale, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. While debit cards held the greatest share of total dollar volume at …
Read More »Processor Global Payments Prepares To Close the Book on Its Data Breach
With little fanfare, Global Payments Inc. last week disclosed that the payment card networks had returned it their lists of processors compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) following remediation efforts the merchant processor began after the data breach it disclosed a year ago. Atlanta-based Global Payments also …
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