Long quiet on the reseller front, First National Merchant Solutions is signing up independent sales organizations as part of a strategic shift mapped out by its new president, Diana M. Mehochko. The merchant-acquiring unit of First National Bank of Omaha signed up half a dozen ISOs last year and is …

PayPal Inc, which earlier this month announced its foray into mobile payments based on short-message service transmissions (Digital Transactions News, April 6), continues to build transaction volume at double-digit rates in its core e-commerce business, though it remains dependent on parent eBay Inc. for the bulk of its traffic. In …

Leading payment card processor First Data Corp., in the midst of a reorganization and spin-off of its Western Union money-transfer business, late Thursday reported first-quarter earnings of $373.3 million, down slightly from $374.5 million in 2005's first quarter. Revenues grew 10% to $2.70 billion from the year-earlier period's $2.47 billion. …

Speaking to an audience of merchant processors, acquirers, and independent sales organizations, Visa USA's president and chief executive today promised the giant bank card network will become more open to non-issuers and responsive to their concerns, including matters related to operating regulations and data security. Appointed only nine months ago …

More banks than ever now levy surcharges on ATM transactions performed by non-customers, and the fee is now higher than ever, according to new data released this week by Bankrate.com, a service of Bankrate Inc. The average ATM surcharge is now $1.60, up from $1.54 in the fall of 2005, …

Putting his best spin on a tough situation, processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) chief executive Philip W. Tomlinson today said he regards the credit card industry’s top three issuers as prospects for future business, even as all three begin or plan to take tens of millions of accounts off …

A year after it acquired the 50% interest in Vital Processing Services that it didn't already own, Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) has renamed the merchant-acquiring processor TSYS Acquiring Solutions and announced several new product lines. The Columbus, Ga.-based company, which is known primarily as a processor for card-issuing banks, …

The number of consumers who use biller Web sites to pay their bills continues to outpace the number who use bank sites, but the latter users are more active transactors, according to recent survey and online-tracking research from comScore Networks Inc. Overall, the online bill-pay market grew 36% in 2005, …

Processors of stored-value transactions are noting a new development that's driving growth in payroll cards, perhaps the hottest prepaid card market: Increasingly, employers are issuing them to workers with checking accounts and other established banking relationships, according to an article set to appear in the May issue of Digital Transactions …

Visa USA's announcement this week of a new program to foster card transactions in the growing category of small-value payments would seem at first blush to be the bank card network's answer to some observers' long-held contention that the card associations should create incentives for the emerging technology of contactless …