Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
With the fabled Cyber Monday shopping frenzy under way, Visa Inc. launched an authentication tool for online transactions intended to cut fraud while reducing the risk of shopping-cart abandonment. The tool, which Visa calls its Consumer Authentication Service, can be deployed by any Visa issuer starting on Monday. The network …
Read More »Fraud Tied to Remotely Created Checks Figures in Bank’s Downfall
A controversial form of automated debit called the remotely created check (RCC) has figured prominently in the demise of a small bank that processed payments for fraudulent merchants and their third-party processors. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Philadelphia announced this week that First Bank of Delaware agreed to a settlement …
Read More »Exceeding $700 Million, Payments Investment in 2012 Could Be Most Seen Since 2001
Venture-capital and private-equity investors are on pace to meet or exceed the $753 million they infused into the payments industry in 2011, the most since the $1.4 billion they invested in payments in 2001. Through the first three quarters of 2012, venture-capital and private-equity investors pumped $711 million into startup …
Read More »Pressing Acquisition Strategy, TSYS Uses ProPay Deal to Get into Mobile Acceptance
Total System Services Inc.’s announcement late last week that it has agreed to buy ProPay Inc. is the latest chapter in TSYS’s strategy of bulking up its position in the merchant-acquiring business through acquisitions. The deal will also hand the Columbus, Ga.-based processor a key stake in the rapidly growing …
Read More »Loaded with Debt, ISO Pipeline Data Files for Bankruptcy Protection
Citing a weak economic climate and business setbacks, independent sales organization Pipeline Data Inc. and its affiliates on Monday filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Pipeline hopes to sell itself as a going concern with the help of an investment bank. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Pipeline …
Read More »The Federal Trade Commission Sniffs Around a Visa Debit Gateway
Already under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for its competitive response to the Durbin Amendment debit card regulations in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act, Visa Inc. is now getting scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission about a gateway service that routes transactions to PIN-debit networks. Visa disclosed on Friday in …
Read More »CreditCall Pushes ‘EMV-in-the-Cloud’ to Ease U.S. Adoption As Readiness Deadlines Near
With deadlines fast approaching for U.S. merchants, acquirers, and other payments players to adopt the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip card standard, vendors are stepping forward with ideas to simplify readiness. One of the latest of these is a concept that asks why chip transactions can’t be managed by remote servers—why, in …
Read More »As Visa Launches its V.me Wallet, It Wins Uptake Among Small Banks And Credit Unions
As it turns out, digital wallets aren’t just a creature of the big banks. With Visa Inc.’s announcement on Tuesday that it has made its V.me digital wallet commercially available, the world’s largest payments network said some 53 financial institutions have signed on to offer the product to customers. Among …
Read More »BAMS Breaks into Mobile Acceptance with a Service that Eschews Aggregation
Just when observers might have thought the mobile-acceptance market couldn’t get more crowded, merchant processor Bank of America Merchant Services LLC on Tuesday announced a service called Mobile Pay on Demand. And while the service includes the now familiar card-reading dongle for attachment to a smart phone, it also features …
Read More »Boston Rail Commuters Get the Nation’s First Smart-Phone Fare App
While some transit agencies are in the process of implementing or mulling fare systems that will accept general-purpose contactless chip cards, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and vendor Masabi US Ltd. on Monday rolled out a smart-phone ticketing app for Boston commuter-rail passengers that requires no big capital investment in …
Read More »