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Local demographics and the availability of a mass-transit system that uses contactless technology for fare payment chiefly accounted for the decision by Isis, the joint venture formed late last year and led by major wireless carriers, to launch its first pilot next year in Salt Lake City, Utah, Isis’s head …
Read More »Common in Acquiring, Sharing of Bad-Merchant Data Comes to the ACH
Taking a cue from bank card merchant acquirers, bank processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) and NACHA on Monday announced the formation of the Terminated Originator Database, a new service to help banks identify businesses that other banks have cut off from originating automated clearing house transactions because of …
Read More »Ingenico To Buy Hypercom Assets, Installs New North American Boss
Ingenico S.A. will buy part of point-of-sale terminal maker Hypercom Corp.’s U.S. assets as VeriFone Systems Inc. prepares to complete its acquisition of Hypercom under a deal the companies announced Monday. France-based Ingenico also installed the head of its Australian unit, Thierry Denis, as its new North American president. …
Read More »The Fed’s Same-Day ACH Service Gets off to a Slow Start
More than eight months after it introduced same-day settlement for automated clearing house transactions, the Federal Reserve has attracted only a handful of banks for the service. “It’s been a long struggle,” Steven Cordray, retail payments project manager at the Atlanta Fed’s Retail Payments Office tells Digital Transactions News. Speaking …
Read More »Account Takeover Fraud Starts to Plague Businesses, AFP Study Shows
Checks caused most of the losses suffered by businesses victimized by payment fraud in 2010, which is no surprise. Businesses, however, are now falling victim to newer types of fraud, particularly account takeovers, that fraudsters have used against consumers in recent years, according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ latest …
Read More »ViVOtech Reveals It Is Kicking the Tires of Hypercom’s U.S. Assets
ViVOtech Inc., a payment hardware and software provider specializing in near-field communication (NFC) technology, on Thursday said it is interested in buying the U.S. assets of Hypercom Corp., the point-of-sale terminal maker in the process of being acquired by rival VeriFone Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif. Santa Clara, Calif.-based ViVOtech …
Read More »3 Million Transactions And Counting: Starbucks Scores Early Mobile Success
Mobile payments may be a nascent business fraught with uncertainty, but Starbucks Coffee Co. seems to have found a key to success. Last week, the company revealed that more than 3 million transactions have taken place on its smart-phone-based prepaid payments system, which became available in all U.S. company-owned stores …
Read More »Buried by Letters, the Fed Delays Issuing Its Debit Card Rules
Overwhelmed by the volume of comments it received, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Tuesday said in letters to Congress the Fed would miss Congress’s April 21 deadline to have issued final debit card interchange and network regulations. Bernanke, however, said the Fed still plans to meet the …
Read More »Consumers Nearly Carefree When It Comes to Smart-Phone Security
With much of the payments industry and Silicon Valley tech press in a speculative frenzy about what Google Inc., Apple Inc., and Facebook Inc. might or might not do regarding mobile payments, a new study has come along indicating that consumers are complacent, arguably extremely complacent, about protecting personal and …
Read More »Relax, Banks. Google Just Wants NFC for Its Advertising Potential, Experts Say
A mobile-payments system from Google Inc. may strengthen the search giant’s hand in marketing but will pose little threat to established payments networks, according to experts contacted by Digital Transactions News. The Google venture, more news of which emerged this week, has surprised some observers because it includes MasterCard Inc. …
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