A clarification of a rule regarding transaction aggregation, announced last week by NACHA, was driven chiefly by banks that intended to hamper a new PIN debit card being introduced by Capital One Financial Corp., sources tell Digital Transactions News. The new card, which came to light late this spring (Digital …

The practice of giving away point-of-sale payment terminals, which started out as a tactic to attract salespeople, has become a huge phenomenon in the merchant-acquiring business that threatens the profitability of many industry firms, particularly smaller independent sales organizations more reliant on hardware revenues than larger acquirers. That's the conclusion …

TIO Networks Corp. signaled a new strategy last week when the kiosk network struck a deal with IPP of America Inc. to process bill payments at IPP walk-in locations (Digital Transactions News, Nov. 29). For the first time, TIO will be handling transactions on its network without the need to …

The settlement The TJX Cos. and Visa Inc. announced Friday not only shows the retailer is well on its way to disposing of the myriad problems arising out the intrusion into its computer system that potentially compromised nearly 100 million credit and debit cards, but it also gives a rare …

A sleepy, middle-tier processor of walk-in bill payments and prepaid card top-ups is embarking on ambitious plans to introduce online bill payment, forge more direct links to billers, and build out its network of retail walk-in locations. Under Ronald W. Averett, its new chief executive, Fairfield, N.J.-based IPP of America …

Nearly a year and a half after first enlisting bank-card merchant acquirers to sign small and mid-size merchants for Discover acceptance, Discover Financial Services LLC says the program is doing just what the company intended. “We’ve seen excellent results,” Matt Johanson, vice president of acquirer relations at Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover, …

NACHA, the rules-setting body for the automated clearing house network, this week announced membership approval of a rule amendment that will raise fines for unauthorized transactions and cut off ACH access for companies that enter too many such payments into the network. NACHA has also issued a rules clarification that …

Online shoppers hit virtual stores on Monday in greater numbers than they ever have before on the Monday after Thanksgiving, but a number of leading e-commerce sites struggled to keep up with all the traffic, according to reports released on Tuesday. On so-called Cyber Monday, consumers performed 1.9 million transactions …

A courtroom food fight of sorts has broken out between big merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and a leading hospitality-industry technology provider supported by a network gateway owned by No. 1 merchant acquirer Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC. Princeton, N.J.-based Heartland today said it has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit …

Results from an Aite Group LLC survey of merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations released on Monday show that processors consider “margin compression,” high interchange, and dealing with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard as the top three challenges facing the acquiring industry. The results, part of a report called …