Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s 400-store Canadian unit announced Saturday that it will no longer accept Visa payment cards in its stores beginning with phased discontinuance starting July 18. “Following an evaluation of credit card transaction fees in Canada and the rest of the world, we have concluded the fees applied to …
Read More »After Tussling With Visa, Durbin Challenges MasterCard Over an Issuer Fee
U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin on Thursday asked MasterCard Inc. to explain an obscure fee with a clunky name that the senator believes penalizes MasterCard issuers when merchants exercise their transaction-routing rights under the Durbin Amendment with MasterCard debit card purchases. But MasterCard says issuers benefit whenever its cards are used, …
Read More »VeriFone’s EMV Honeymoon Ends; Certification Delays Crimp Earnings
The U.S. conversion to EMV chip cards has produced a windfall for VeriFone Systems Inc. over the past couple of years. But despite record revenues in the quarter ended April 30, delays in getting EMV equipment certified contributed to sharply lower profits and financial expectations for the leading domestic point-of-sale …
Read More »Nearly 40% of U.S. Visa Credit and Debit Cards Now Have an EMV Chip
Nearly 283 million Visa-branded credit and debit cards issued by U.S. financial institutions now have an EMV chip, Visa Inc. reports. In addition, some 1.1 million U.S. merchant locations that accept Visa cards now take chip cards. In the latest of the payment card networks’ updates on the U.S. chip …
Read More »Eye on Washington: ATM Deployers Slam Operation Choke Point; NRF Wants PCI Probe
A trade group of independent ATM deployers on Thursday issued a report blasting the federal government’s Operation Choke Point targeting high-risk merchants, and the nation’s leading retailer association called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the PCI Security Standards Council on antitrust grounds. While mostly affecting a few merchant …
Read More »The PCI Council Updates its Payment-Processing Software Rules
The PCI Security Standards Council on Friday released version 3.2 of its Payment Application Data Security Standard, which sets rules for payment-processing software. The new PA-DSS aligns with the recently updated main security standard, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard version 3.2. Today’s update was expected, as the Wakefield, …
Read More »Fraud and Chargeback Reduction Are Top of Mind for E-Commerce Payments Execs
Minimizing fraud is by far the top payment concern of e-commerce merchants, according to findings from the Merchant Risk Council’s newly released global payments survey. Some 46% of all merchants surveyed about payments and e-commerce issues affecting them in 2015—51% of MRC members and 35% of non-members—ranked managing e-commerce fraud …
Read More »Expenses From the Home Depot and Target Data Breaches Surpass $500 Million
This week’s revelation by The Home Depot Inc. that it has incurred $263 million in expenses from its 2014 data breach means that the home-improvement retailer’s breach costs, together with those of another big-box retailer, Target Corp., now total $554 million. In a quarterly regulatory filing Tuesday, Atlanta-based Home Depot …
Read More »Two Green Dot Directors Up for Re-Election Resign Just Before Contested Annual Meeting
Two long-time members of Green Dot Corp.’s board of directors who were up for re-election suddenly resigned Sunday, just ahead of the company’s contested annual shareholder meeting Monday that potentially could lead to the ouster of company founder and chief executive Steven W. Streit. The Pasadena, Calif.-based prepaid card provider …
Read More »Streit Retained, but Two of Dissident Shareholder’s Nominees Elected to Green Dot Board
Green Dot Corp. shareholders re-elected chairman and chief executive Steven W. Streit to the company’s board of directors Monday after a proxy fight, but they also elected two nominees from dissident shareholder Harvest Capital Strategies LLC, which has called for Streit’s ouster. Harvest Capital, which says that Streit is not …
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