Banking-services provider Fiserv Inc. announced on Monday a free widget that will let banks readily create a simplified bill-payment function on the so-called landing page of their online-banking sites. The widget, which starting some time in the second quarter will also enable person-to-person payments, is a piece of code that …
Read More »Fed Surprises Prepaid Industry with a Tight Deadline for Compliance
Meeting the Aug. 22 deadline for complying with new rules for prepaid and gift cards released on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve will be a logistical nightmare for card companies and retailers that have to replace hundreds of millions of cards before the 2010 holiday shopping season, according to a …
Read More »Heartland Preps for Its Big End-to-End Encryption Rollout
Merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc.'s sales force will begin selling the company's new end-to-end encryption system in the second quarter following testing that began last June, the company says. Heartland also says several terminal manufacturers are integrating the technological protocols of its system, which was developed by Voltage Security …
Read More »All-Digital Checks Get a Boost from an ‘Outsider’ Technology Startup
The concept of an all-digital check, which surfaced in a paper published in November by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, could move from theory to reality in a matter of months now that a technology startup in Atlanta has won a pair of patents covering applications of the idea. …
Read More »Bill-to-Carrier Rivalry Heats up with Danal’s Verizon Breakthrough
Competition in the bill-to-carrier mobile payments market is heating up with Verizon Wireless's announcement it will offer the service directly to consumers through Danal Inc.'s BilltoMobile payment service within the next few weeks. The deal marks Seoul, Korea-based mobile payments operator Danal's first contract in the U.S. Danal is in …
Read More »Eye on Mobile: Wells Rolls out Alerts; Arkansas First in M-Payments
News about the latest developments in the hot mobile-payments sector is coming from some familiar sources, such as Wells Fargo & Co. and Visa Inc., and some unlikely ones, such as the state of Arkansas. Wells Fargo is rolling out Visa's text-message and e-mail alert service that lets credit card …
Read More »FrontStream’s Fast Transact Deal Shows Some M&A Thaw
Growing independent sales organization FrontStream Payments Inc. made another deal last week that could be a sign that merger-and-acquisition activity in the merchant-acquiring industry is warming up after a recession-induced chill. The transaction also illustrates that private-equity firms see the merchant-acquiring space as a fertile ground for new investments. In …
Read More »Fifth Third Processing Jumps on the End-to-End Encryption Bandwagon
The merchant-acquirer encryption and tokenization train picked up speed this week when Fifth Third Processing Solutions, one of the nation's biggest payment processors, announced it would offer its merchants end-to-end encryption and tokenization systems for protecting cardholder data. Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Processing's technology comes from Voltage Security Inc., the Palo …
Read More »On the Rise, Friendly Fraud Is Getting Online Merchants’ Attention
More online shoppers are repudiating transactions even after they've received their merchandise, much to the chagrin of online merchants, which are focusing on the problem as they seldom have in the past. That's according to Robert W. Botelle, executive vice president for merchant services and chief customer officer at Litle …
Read More »Discover’s Hybrid Growth Strategy Boosts Network Volumes
Discover Financial Services now has more than 100 bank card merchant acquirers booking small to medium-sized merchants for its network, the company reported today at an investor presentation in New York City. Discover predicts that those acquirers will enable Discover acceptance in 97% of their new merchant sales in 2010's …
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