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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 …
Read More »Rising Fees Could Be Culprit As Fewer Doctors Accept Credit Cards
While credit card acceptance is making inroads in a slew of new markets like transit and parking, it turns out the plastic is losing ground among physicians. Some 32.7% of doctors' offices do not accept credit cards, up almost 4.5 percentage points from a year ago, according to a survey …
Read More »Security Issues Weigh Most Heavily with Acquirers, Research Says
Security issues weigh more heavily on the minds of executives with merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations than they do among any other payment card industry sector, according to new research from Aite Group LLC. Some 43% of acquiring executives rated data security, including compliance with the Payment Card Industry …
Read More »A Designed-for-ISOs Remote Capture Product Begins to Win Business
Wausau Financial Systems Inc., which late last year introduced a version of its remote deposit capture product specifically designed for independent sales organizations, has signed one ISO and will have three more on board by the end of the month, according to a company executive and company reports. Wausau, a …
Read More »Merchant Groups Ask for Broad Changes in Letter to PCI’s Overseer
They're mad as hell, but whether they're going to take it any more isn't quite as clear. That's the essence of a letter seven merchant trade groups sent Tuesday to the PCI Security Standards Council and the five general-purpose payment card networks. The merchants want more input when the Payment …
Read More »Dead in ’08, Back in ’09: Congress Reintroduces an Interchange Bill
The Credit Card Fair Fee Act, a bill that would inject government into the interchange-setting process, has been resurrected after dying in committee last year. But this time there are more players around the table seemingly less inclined to sympathize with the defenders of the current bank card interchange system. …
Read More »Eye on Security: ‘Unique’ ATM Malware; Theft of Sony Card Data
Malicious software has been discovered on some Eastern European ATMs that has dangerous new powers to extract money as well as card data, according to a security executive. Meanwhile, Sony Corp. of America has confirmed that someone illicitly copied more than 5,000 credit card numbers of its customers who visited …
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