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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Wednesday slashed the pricing it imposes on its prepaid Visa card, cutting the activation fee by nearly two-thirds, the reload fee by 35%, and the monthly maintenance charge by 39%. Since it rolled out its MoneyCard in June 2007, Wal-Mart has sold 2 million of the …
Read More »New Banking Group Aims at Smoothing out Image-Exchange Process
A new, eight-member banking group that is working to smooth out the remaining kinks in image exchange, the process by which paper checks can be turned into images and settled electronically, has released four recommendations and is working on another eight. The Image Industry Interoperability Group, or i3G as it …
Read More »UATP Keeps Its Eye on Alternative Payments?and Hotels
Universal Air Travel Plan Inc. is still in growth mode despite some weakness in its core corporate travel business, thanks in part to an ongoing alternative online-payments initiative that started in 2005. Now the specialty payment processor is looking to sign hotels as merchants. Processing volumes rose about 20% last …
Read More »ACH Bill Payments Shine As Other E-Checks Dim with Check Decline
Internet bill payments were the star performers among the established electronic-check payment options during the fourth quarter, according to figures released Wednesday by the governing body of the automated clearing house. NACHA reports that transaction volume on its WEB e-check code, the code for online transactions such as bill payments, …
Read More »Merchant Warehouse Launches a Terminal-Based Rate Cutter
A software program that works with point-of-sale terminals allows small merchants to process card transactions at the lowest available interchange rates and arms them with cost-saving technology that up to now was available only to large retailers, according to the independent sales organization that introduced the technology this week. “Tier …
Read More »Noca Stresses Low-Cost ACH Payments for Online Merchants
Noca Inc., which this week launched a beta version of an online-payments product that relies on the automated clearing house network, plans to have a commercial service ready for launch by June, Pankaj Gupta, president and founder of the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup tells Digital Transactions News. One feature the …
Read More »How Checking Fees Create An Opening for Prepaid Cards
Banks claim they want to serve so-called underbanked and unbanked consumers, but the fees they slap onto checking accounts, particularly non-sufficient funds (NSF) and overdraft fees, are creating a strong business case for prepaid cards to displace a substantial number of checking accounts, according to a new research report. Using …
Read More »Mazooma Launches As Consumers Seek out Alternatives to Credit
A downward-spiraling economy is accelerating what had already been a rapidly developing trend for startups to introduce online payment methods as alternatives to bank cards. Indeed, one such company, Miami-based Mazooma Inc., launched a cash-based commercial service on Tuesday with the premise that consumers are looking for ways to buy …
Read More »More ID Fraud Cases Stem from Data Breaches, Report Says
The good news about identity fraud: dollar losses per incident are going down. The bad news: incidents are up. The bad news for merchants: fraud victims, especially young adults, will punish merchants they associate with ID fraud. And some bad news for the payments industry in general: more ID fraud …
Read More »It’s Hunker-Down Time for the Bank Card Networks
If the flow of recessionary credit card spending could be likened to the Niagara River, MasterCard Inc. has gone over the falls while Visa is still just upstream at Grand Island. MasterCard on Thursday reported fourth-quarter drops of nearly 10% in U.S. credit card purchase volume and more than 6% …
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