The two major sides of today's prepaid card industry, branded or general purpose on one side and private label on the other, both still have enormous growth potential, but the branded side has the stronger prospects, according to a new report from Boston-based financial research firm Aite Group LLC. Aite …

The Capitol Hill spotlight shone again on payment card acceptance costs Thursday when a U.S. House of Representatives antitrust panel held a hearing to investigate interchange. At issue is the question whether the federal government should play any role regarding this most controversial aspect of card pricing. Bank interests are …

A startup company managed by former executives from online travel agency Orbitz LLC plans to release in the fourth quarter a software product that will let online merchants manage the gamut of transaction fraud issues, from front-end screening to automated order review to chargeback processing and, eventually, back-end collections and …

More large merchants now meet the dictates of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, according to new numbers from Visa U.S.A. At the same time, Visa, the biggest payment-card network, is turning its security attention to small merchants, the source of the majority of data breaches. Visa and …

Billeo Inc., whose software streamlines online bill payment for consumers, this week announced new product enhancements that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company hopes will allow banks to earn more bill-payment revenue. It also extends the company's reach into online shopping with a new software component that automatically fills out online …

With an eye to Capital One Financial Corp.'s introduction last month of a so-called decoupled debit card product, which relies on settlement through the automated clearing house network and so does not require cardholders to have a demand-deposit account with Cap One (Digital Transactions News, June 7), debit network sponsor …

Though still growing in volume from month to month, substitute checks now account for only about one-third of total image-exchange traffic between banks, according to the latest industrywide data. By contrast, a year ago these costly paper printouts of check images amounted to 56% of all image-exchange volume. At the …

The booming popularity of prepaid cards has created opportunities for payments companies far beyond just issuing plastic cards. The reloading of already-issued prepaid cards, for instance, is emerging as a major business. And that means Monrovia, Calif.-based Green Dot Corp.'s 40,000-location reload network is attracting attention from such big companies …

It's the summer of change in the executive suites of some major payment-industry companies. Two days after No. 1 processor First Data Corp. named a new chief executive, struggling payment-terminal manufacturer Hypercom Corp. announced that William Keiper, its chief executive for not quite two years, would leave his post Aug …

PayPal Inc.'s much-anticipated mobile-commerce service made its official debut this week in a development PayPal executive Kevin Dulsky calls a “game-changing” event for the electronic-transactions business. The launch of PayPal Mobile Checkout, which claims at least 20 merchants signed up so far, follows weeks of speculation about the m-commerce version …