Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
The trend toward using adhesive tags to give mobile phones contactless-payment capability is going one step farther?now at least one startup is marketing a small sheet of vinyl that wraps around the entire mobile device and contains a contactless chip-and-antenna inlay. Mobile Payment Skins LLC launched last week to offer …
Read More »CashEdge Unveils a P2P Service To Be Controlled by Banks
The person-to-person payment business, which has attracted a number of new players already this year, grew more crowded on Tuesday with the announcement by CashEdge Inc. that it will launch a service later this year. Executives with New York City-based CashEdge, which specializes in supporting online account opening and account-to-account …
Read More »With a New PIN Pad, First Data Promotes Contactless to Merchants
PIN-debit cards and contactless acceptance seem like two unlikely electronic-payment services to promote in one point-of-sale device, but that's exactly what First Data Corp. is doing with the latest addition to its FD line of POS hardware. The big processor's goal with the new FD-30 PIN pad: build future demand …
Read More »Discover’s Transaction Volumes Hold Up in a Turbulent Quarter
With the credit crisis still blowing at gale force, Discover Financial Services managed to grow its second-quarter transaction and dollar volume thanks mostly to its Pulse PIN-debit network and Diners Club International more than offsetting weak credit card volume. Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover reported Thursday that it handled a total of …
Read More »Consolidators To Take Greater Share of Slower-Growing Bill-Pay Market
Electronic bill-payment consolidators?notably banks?could finally claim at least half the market, but to hold on to their gains, banks will need to pay special attention to affluent young adults. That's a key conclusion in a new forecast for the growing bill-pay market by Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc. Forrester predicts …
Read More »MasterCard Launches Mobile MoneySend for U.S. P2P Transactions
MasterCard Inc. on Wednesday announced its person-to-person payment service for mobile phones has launched in the U.S. with one issuer on board and an untold number waiting in the wings. The card network's Mobile MasterCard MoneySend service, which has been in the works for at least a year (Digital Transactions …
Read More »The Banking System Scrambles Toward IAT’s September Launch
With the deadline just three months away, the banking industry is scrambling to implement IAT, the new automated clearing house code for international transactions. IAT originally was to take effect March 20. But NACHA?The Electronic Payments Association, governing body of the ACH, last July pushed it back to Sept. 18, …
Read More »Boku Debuts to Exploit Markets in Social Networks And Games
Micropayments may have failed in previous attempts, but the idea of processing tiny transactions is enjoying new life in mobile payments. The latest example lies in the announcements made on Tuesday by Boku Inc. that it has acquired two rivals and is launching its worldwide service to allow handset users …
Read More »Carrier-Based Mobile P2P Gets Under Way in Canada
A new service debuted on Monday in Canada for which there is no equivalent in the U.S.: a single mobile person-to-person payments offering from the nation's three major wireless telecommunications companies. The service, called Zoompass, also is linked to a prepaid MasterCard PayPass contactless card that gives it utility at …
Read More »Two More Congressional Bills Aim at Interchange Regulation
U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin's introduction this week of a Senate companion to U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2009, along with a little-noticed bill introduced last month in the House, bring to three the number of interchange bills pending in the Democrat-controlled Congress. And while …
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