Wednesday , November 13, 2024

John Stewart

Starting as an editor on Bank Network News at Faulkner & Gray, John ultimately played a key role in starting, editing, and publishing many of F&G's flagship publications, including Credit Card Management, Card Technology, Card Marketing, and Collections & Credit Risk. Before co-founding Boland Hill Media, John was a group publisher at Thomson Media responsible for a $10 million division embracing magazines, newsletters, and Web sites.

Target Denies Reports That Data Thieves’ Haul Included PINs

Target Corp. is denying a widely circulated report that the information stolen by cyber criminals in a massive breach of credit and debit card data included customer’s debit card PINs Citing a “senior payments executive familiar with the situation,” Reuters reported early Christmas Day that the data thieves have the …

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Fed Report: Plastic Strengthens Its Grip on Payments As Credit Cards Resume Growth

More than ever, plastic dominates the business of electronic payments in the United States, with two-thirds of all noncash transactions in 2012 occurring on a card, up substantially from 60% just three years earlier. That’s according to the Federal Reserve System’s triennial payments study, released Thursday. The sweeping research report, …

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Federal Court Issues OK for Multibillion-Dollar Credit Card Interchange Settlement

Capping years of complex litigation, a federal court on Friday approved a controversial multibillion-dollar settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange rates. With his imprimatur, Judge John Gleeson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has brought apparent—but only apparent—finality to a …

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Debit Networks Form Organization to Work on EMV As Court Mulls Durbin Decision

  Ten U.S. debit networks have formed the Debit Network Alliance LLC, an organization meant to ensure they have a competitive stake in the debit industry following the U.S. payment-industry migration to the EMV chip card standard, expected within a couple of years. The new group has sprung up as …

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SimplyTapp, the Power Behind Google’s NFC Workaround, Aims at Mobile Banking

Ever since Google Inc. stunned the payments business early last month with its mobile operating system update that skirts the secure element for near-field communication, all eyes have been on a tiny startup in Austin, Texas, called SimplyTapp Inc. The 2-year-old company, with six full-time employees, has kept busy answering questions …

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Digital Gift Cards Come Into Their Own As Holiday Promotions Spur Sales, ‘Self-Giving’

Only a few years old, digital gift cards are soaring in popularity as U.S. consumers head into the heart of the holiday shopping season. Total loads on the products will reach $1.3 billion for November and December, a nearly four-fold increase from the same two-month stretch last year, according to …

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Mobile Now Accounts for 37% of Transactions at Money-Transfer Upstart Xoom

Mobile devices, which have fundamentally changed so much of the electronic payments business, are now shaking up the cross-border remittance market. Twelve-year-old Xoom Corp., a relative newcomer to the business, says 37% of its transactions in the third quarter originated on mobile devices, compared to 22% a year ago. More …

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Coin Gets Lots of Buzz, But May Get Devalued When the Euphoria Wears off, Experts Say

The Coin card, which officially launched last Thursday but is not yet available in the market, is generating a tidal wave of buzz in the press and on social-media sites but is not wowing payments experts contacted by Digital Transactions News. “It’s solving a problem that doesn’t really exist,” says …

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Despite Signs of Progress, Small Merchants Still Lag on Risk Assessment And PCI

Coming on the heels of the release last week by the PCI Security Standards Council of a revised Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) is a report Tuesday that shows how much progress small merchants are making in locking down card data—and how painfully slow much of that progress has …

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Isis Official Gives a Broad Peek at Product Plans for 2014, Following National Rollout

A wider array of payment cards and more finely targeted advertising are among the features and capabilities the Isis mobile-payments venture previewed on Thursday for possible launch in 2014, following the venture's national rollout. In pulling back the curtain, however, the venture, which is backed by mobile-network behemoths AT&T Mobility, …

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