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As the economy continues to sputter, U.S. card-billed business at American Express Co. fell 15% to $104.8 billion in the second quarter, from $123.5 billion a year earlier, according to results the travel-and-entertainment giant reported on Thursday. Average U.S. cardholder spending during the quarter on so-called basic card issued directly …
Read More »Microsoft Is Among the First to Try out PayPal’s New Payments API
Microsoft Inc. is among three developers that have integrated PayPal Inc.'s new application programming interfaces into applications as part of a beta program, PayPal announced on Thursday. PayPal formally opened its payment platform to third-party platform developers at a conference for developers. By opening up the platform program?called PayPal X?PayPal …
Read More »Going After Right Merchants for Remote Capture Pays off for ISOs
Merchants that are good prospects for accepting remote deposit capture services have different needs from many credit and debit card-accepting merchants, but independent sales organizations that do their remote capture homework will be rewarded. That was the word on Wednesday from several vendors speaking at the MidWest Acquirers Association 7th …
Read More »Eye on Acquiring: Airlines Seek Ways to Chop Acceptance Costs
Buffeted by strong economic headwinds, U.S. airlines are looking at a variety of ways to slow the seemingly inexorable rise of card-acceptance costs, as borne out by two separate developments in recent days. United Air Lines Inc. said on Monday it is putting off for up to 60 days a …
Read More »Fifth Third Is the Latest Bank To Use Western Union for Money Transfer
Fifth Third Bank will be offering global money-transfer services at its 1,300 branches in 12 states under an agreement The Western Union Co. announced Monday. The new service is part of the Cincinnati-based bank's ongoing effort to provide services to the unbanked and underbanked, Mark Erhardt, senior vice president of …
Read More »PCI Council Releases Guidelines for Wireless Network Security
Nearly a year after ordering the phase-out of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), a technology introduced in 1999 to protect data flowing over wireless networks, the PCI Security Standards Council this week released new guidelines for enhanced wireless security. The so-called Payment Card Industry data security standard wireless, written by the …
Read More »Interac Connects With Contactless Debit Payments
Canada's Interac Association debit network is teaming with France-based semiconductor manufacturer Inside Contactless in a partnership that will include a test next year that will pair PIN-based debit cards with contactless payments. But to keep transactions moving quickly, cardholders will not need to enter a PIN. The test will be …
Read More »Eye on ISOs: Wooing Merchants Harder, Plus an ECR Giveaway
Acquirers and independent sales organizations have plenty of opportunity to build transaction volume with merchants despite the economic downturn. They just need to work harder at incentives for merchants to accept cards instead of cash or checks and on satisfying merchant needs, according to a new research report released Wednesday …
Read More »Eye on M-Commerce: Apple’s App Store Traffic Hits 1.5 Billion Downloads
While experts debate when mobile commerce will hit its stride, Apple Inc. announced on Tuesday that its App Store, which it set up just one year ago, has downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications for the company's hugely popular iPhone handset. The App Store had just hit the 1 billion …
Read More »Online Bill Pay Gains 1.3 Million Households in ‘Generational Change’
More than 2 million new households logged into online banking over the past year, bringing the online-banking share of the nation's households with Internet access to 79%. That's one of the key findings from the 2009 Consumer Billing and Payment Trends survey from bank processor and bill-pay technology provider Fiserv …
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