Fiserv Inc.’s top brass early Wednesday celebrated a second quarter in which adjusted revenue jumped 7% and adjusted earnings per share grew 18%, but it was new programs and alliances—including one with Apple Inc.—that took center stage as the company presented its second-quarter results. Cash Flow Central, a banking alliance …
Read More »AmEx Outlines an Aggressive Plan for Expansion in Marketing
At more than $16 billion, revenue for American Express Co. hit an all-time high in the company’s June quarter, and now the travel-and-entertainment card giant is looking to ramp up marketing—radically. The company’s top brass said early Friday AmEx will pour $6 billion this year into selling consumers and businesses …
Read More »Data Compromises Have Dipped, But The Running Total Remains Scary
Instances of data compromise in the United States were down in the second quarter, but the good news pretty much ends there, according to information released early Wednesday by the Identity Theft Resource Center. Cybercriminals pulled off 732 total compromises online in the second quarter, a total that was down …
Read More »Apple Agrees to Let Wallet Developers in Europe Access the iPhone’s NFC Chip
Under pressure from the European Commission, Apple Inc. agreed Thursday to open the contactless-payment technology in its iPhone for payments on wallets from outside developers. The agreement follows two years of investigation by the regulator, which has argued the exclusion of rival wallets from using the iPhone’s near-field communication chip …
Read More »A Panoply of Factors Help Drive Record Volume for the Big Banks’ Real Time Payments Network
The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC reported early Wednesday its 7-year-old RTP service on June 28 exceeded $1 billion in daily volume for the first time. TCH waited a week and a half to disclose the milestone as it worked out what the factors were behind the record-setting performance, only …
Read More »Cross River Pairs With MassPay to Bring Real Time Payments to a Broader Market
Barely more than a year after the Federal Reserve launched its FedNow platform, banks and service providers are finding ways to bring real-time payment capability to niche businesses. The latest example emerged early Tuesday with an announcement that Cross River Bank, a technology-oriented financial institution, is working with payments platform …
Read More »Discover Unveils Balance+ to Offer Overdraft Protection on Debit Cards
Consumers may be well acquainted with the concept of overdraft protection when writing checks, but early Monday Discover Financial Services said it is extending the service to its debit cards. Cardholders who hold the company’s Cashback Debit Checking account are eligible for the new service, called Balance+. “With Balance+ we …
Read More »Canadian Processor Helcim Looks to Draw More Partners With a Revenue Split
The Canada-based payments provider Helcim Inc., which like many processors works with a range of third-party partners, said late on Tuesday it is stepping up that collaboration to allow these integration partners to share in the company’s transaction revenue. Helcim figures revenue sharing will help attract yet more developers and …
Read More »How the Supreme Court Has Set up an Intense Struggle Over Sellers’ Debit Card Costs
Decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court are supposed to settle matters, but a verdict the high court delivered early Monday has the potential to stir up debit card pricing questions for some time to come, some observers say. The justices, in a 6-3 decision, ruled a case brought by a …
Read More »Contactless May At Some Point Include Functions Beyond Payment, the NFC Forum Says
Contactless transactions were supercharged by the pandemic, and now slightly more than half of U.S. cardholders are using the technology when they pay with either cards or wallets, according to Mastercard Inc. research. With that kind of momentum behind them, researchers are looking at ways to expand near-field communication technology, …
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