Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Results from a pilot in San Francisco involving multiple accounts on cell phones equipped with specialized contactless-payment capability show that consumers will readily adopt such technology as a form of wallet and as a way of accessing marketing content, says an executive with the processor involved in the pilot. In …
Read More »Bill Me Later Extends eBay’s Payments Reach to Top Web Retailers
In praising online credit payment system Bill Me Later Inc. Monday morning, PayPal Inc. President Scott Thompson called Bill Me Later a “disruptive business” in the positive sense, and he credited PayPal for also being a disruptive payments player. And disruption of the status quo is quite possible with today's …
Read More »Visa Could Score a Debit Win As Wachovia Jilts Citi for Wells
Just a week ago, it looked like MasterCard Inc. was about to win a battle in its ongoing debit card war with market leader Visa Inc. MasterCard stalwart Citigroup Inc. had struck a deal to buy, with help from the government, most of struggling Wachovia Corp.'s banking assets, including Wachovia's …
Read More »Visa Looks to Imaging ATMs to Offer Prepaid Card Reloads
Prepaid cards usually get reloaded through direct deposit or when the cardholder takes cash to a merchant, who then swipes the card and receives confirmation that the value has been credited to the card. Now Visa Inc., in an effort to expand its Visa ReadyLink prepaid card reload network, is …
Read More »Reputation, Products, Free Terminals Rank High in ISO Selection
Not all merchants choose independent sales organizations and acquirers the same way, and when they do, they do so for widely disparate reasons, says a research report released this week by Aite Group LLC, Boston. Yet “ISOs and acquirers are not differentiating among merchants” with respect to direct marketing and …
Read More »New Version of PCI Shows More Flexibility, While PABP Takes Hold
After a summer of discussion, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council on Wednesday officially released Version 1.2 of the PCI data-security standard, the sweeping set of rules for protecting Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB cards and transactions. Wednesday also is the first day for a Visa Inc. …
Read More »An ACH-Based Bill-Pay Pilot Promises Fee Income to Banks
An electronic bill-presentment and ?payment system that uses the automated clearing house network picked up some momentum recently with the addition of a second participating bank to its pilot program and could gain more as processors serving thousands of banks start linking to the system. Dollar Bank, a Pittsburgh-based thrift, …
Read More »How ProPay Plans to Leverage Its Position in eBay Transactions
ProPay Inc., the only third-party payment processor chosen by eBay Inc. to handle transactions under its new all-electronic payment policy, says it is looking to the arrangement for big growth but hasn't yet worked out any projections for how much volume it will generate. “We see this as a growth …
Read More »MasterCard Could Catch a Break from Citi’s Deal for Wachovia
Citigroup Inc.'s government-assisted takeover of Wachovia Corp.'s banking assets, announced Monday morning, holds a debit card silver lining for MasterCard Inc. in a deal that otherwise symbolizes the radical reshaping of the banking industry after the mortgage meltdown. Citi is a predominantly MasterCard issuer while Wachovia is a big Visa …
Read More »Chase’s WaMu Deal Puts MasterCard on the Debit Defensive
MasterCard Inc., the distant No. 2 in the U.S. signature-based debit card market, scored a big win in 2005 over rival Visa Inc. when Washington Mutual Inc. said it would convert its Visa-branded debit portfolio of more than 10 million cards to MasterCard. But that gain is now in jeopardy …
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