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 …
Read More »Wal-Mart Just One of Many Merchants Behind MCX, Best Buy Exec Says
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. …
Read More »FIS Heats up Faster Funds Trend with Its PayNet Real-Time Network
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 …
Read More »Acquirers Bear Burden to Warn Small Merchants About EMV Risk Shift, Processor Exec Says
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 …
Read More »Tab for Global Payments Data Breach Could Total About $120 Million
Global Payments Inc. still expects it could spend about $120 million as a result of the data breach it reported in early March, but new information from the company gives a glimpse of just where that money is going. The big merchant processor, however, didn’t give any new details in …
Read More »For POS Push, PayPal Snags Big-Time Processors But Works to Woo ISOs As Well
The deals PayPal Inc. and Discover Financial Services disclosed last week with processors Vantiv Inc. and Global Payments Inc. are just the start of PayPal’s efforts to win acceptance at physical merchants. PayPal is also starting to woo independent sales organizations to help push its mark into potentially millions of …
Read More »On One-Year Anniversary, Heartland Says ‘Durbin Dollars’ Helping Merchants, Consumers
Almost universally derided by banks and payment card networks, the Durbin Amendment debit card interchange price controls that took effect a year ago Monday have received mixed reviews from merchant acquirers. But one big acquirer that made Durbin a key part of its sales and retention efforts early on, Heartland …
Read More »Isis and USAT Strike a Deal That Could Bring Mobile Payments to 7,500 Vending Machines
Isis, the object of skepticism this summer because of delays in rolling out its mobile-payment system based on near-field communication (NFC) technology, might be about to gain some traction thanks to a new agreement with vending-machine payments provider USA Technologies Inc. (USAT). In a little-noticed disclosure last week, Malvern, Pa-based …
Read More »Ignorance Is Not Bliss, According to Survey of Sites Compromised by Phishers
Most owners of legitimate sites that have been compromised to support phishing attacks have no idea their site has been violated until some third party tells them, according to a recent survey. But the cluelessness doesn’t end there. Nearly half of owners of compromised sites don’t know how the attack …
Read More »Retailers Prepare To Argue for a Rewrite of Debit Rules While Durbin Spars With Bankers
You’d almost think it was 2010 all over again, given the current fights about the Durbin Amendment, the section of that year’s Dodd-Frank Act that regulates debit card interchange and transaction routing. Oral arguments are set for Oct. 3 in a retailer lawsuit that seeks to have a court order …
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