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The payment gateway business may be consolidating, but smaller players are trying to survive by adding services to meet e-commerce merchants' demand for more diversified payment options than simply credit cards. This week, for example, Los Angeles-based USA ePay announced that it is offering Digital EFT Solutions LLC's DEFT Deposit …
Read More »Why a Small Bank Sees Big Things in College Prepaid Programs
A small Oklahoma banking company is looking to an ambitious university prepaid card deployment, which also involves contactless payment, to help it diversify a prepaid service it offers primarily to the Hispanic population. Central National Bank, Enid, Okla., is issuing PIN-based prepaid debit cards to the 10,300 students, faculty, and …
Read More »Star Fills in Some ATM Gaps With Its New Allpoint Connection
Processor First Data Corp.'s Star electronic funds transfer network on Tuesday announced a deal with the Bethesda, Md.-based Allpoint ATM network that Star expects will fill in some geographic gaps in its nearly nationwide ATM coverage. Under the arrangement, financial-institution users of Star's Starsf service will be able to offer …
Read More »Wachovia Milestone Points up Wider Adoption of Remote Capture
In a sign of the spreading popularity of remote deposit capture among U.S. businesses, Wachovia Corp.'s treasury services division announced on Monday it had hit $1 billion in remote capture volume for a single day. The Charlotte, N.C.-based regional bank attributed the milestone to the increasing adoption of the technology …
Read More »More Contactless Taxis with MasterCard-VeriFone Projects
MasterCard Worldwide announced on Thursday that taxis in New York City are accepting contactless cards in a program that will include 5,000 vehicles by December. The bank card network also said a so-far undetermined number of Las Vegas cabs will take place in a contactless pilot in Las Vegas that …
Read More »How Non-Bank ATM Owners Are Culling Subpar Machines
Culling seems to be a popular practice at the two largest non-bank ATM networks these days. Both Cardtronics Inc. and financially troubled TRM Corp., which is telling investors it might not survive, lost money in the second quarter and say their U.S. ATM counts are down. TRM, which has been …
Read More »Visa Sets Interchange Penalty Under PCI: A One-Tier Downgrade
Acquirers will be penalized one interchange tier for large merchants that qualify for volume-based tiered rates and fail to show compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) by Sept. 30, Visa USA says. In a document it released earlier this month to its members, Visa clarified an interchange …
Read More »More Consumers Use Card Sites to Pay Bills, Manage Accounts
Consumers' willingness to pay credit card bills online is rising rapidly, with 524 million transactions in 2006, a 27% jump over 414 million payments in 2005, according to survey data from comScore Inc. The most recent online payment volume, which represents payments consumers make at card issuers' Web sites, is …
Read More »Time to Change the Weird Logic Behind Data Breaches
Data Insecurity (Editor's Note: This is the first of a 10-part series by noted electronic-payments-industry analyst Steve Mott on the current crisis in transaction security?its causes, its costs, and its possible solutions?ranging from the point of sale to the Internet to mobile commerce. After eight weekly articles, the series moves …
Read More »Turbulent Financial Seas Won’t Sink First Data Buyout, Observers Say
The $29-billion leveraged buyout of payment processor First Data Corp. will proceed as planned, a spokesperson for the huge processor says, even though the private-equity firm leading the buyout acknowledged Monday that recent market events could make its future prospects riskier. New York City-based Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.'s statement …
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