Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Discover Financial Services LLC's new merchant-processing pact with leading payment processor First Data Corp. that involves small and mid-sized merchants is just the first of more deals Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover plans to strike with big merchant acquirers to expand acceptance of the No. 4 card brand while simultaneously reducing costs. …
Read More »Google Wins Points with Retailers, But Consumer Reaction Unclear
The product has been available for only two weeks, but Google Inc.'s online payment service has already won considerable favor with at least some Internet merchants and companies that process online transactions. Meanwhile, some analysts caution that even if Google Checkout, the online search giant's name for its long-expected entry …
Read More »Seeing Incident ‘Uptick,’ Visa Issues Security Alert to Small Restaurants
Visa USA Inc. is releasing a security alert in response to an increase in data breaches it has detected among small and mid-sized restaurants. In reviewing data from the last few months, Visa saw “there's been an uptick in incidents from this sector” compared to previous time periods, says Martin …
Read More »PCI Expert Cautiously Optimistic As Compliance Rate Looks to Climb
Of 232 large U.S. merchants identified by Visa USA in 2004 and 2005, some 23% now comply with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI), but 73% are projected to be in compliance by the end of the year “based on progress reports,” says Michael Dahn, president of Volubis Inc., …
Read More »Swapped PIN-Pad Fraud Pops up in Ottawa, Netting $2 Million
Ottawa police are close to bringing charges against a retail clerk who police say has helped a local criminal ring siphon an estimated $2 million (Canadian) over the past three months from hundreds of bank accounts by using rigged point-of-sale terminals to steal debit card account numbers and PINs, according …
Read More »End of First Data Net Saga Sets up FDC To Get Payments from Visa
Visa USA and payment-processing giant First Data Corp. on Wednesday announced a settlement in a 4-year-old legal dispute that apparently puts an end to First Data Net, a high-profile initiative of First Data's former top official, and also appears to set up FDC to receive payments from Visa to help …
Read More »Visa, U.S. Chamber Launch Multi-City Data-Security Tour
Some 34% of small merchants invest more in locking down products and cash in their stores than in securing customer data, while the proportion doing the opposite is one-fifth, according to survey results released Monday. In addition, though 64% of the merchants say they had taken steps within the last …
Read More »Networks Begin to Make a Case for Cards at Vending Machines
Transaction Network Services Inc., which is routing wireless card transactions for Pepsi Co. at 500 vending machines, plans to boost that count to 10,000 machines across the country in 2007. TNS executives tell Digital Transactions in a story for the upcoming July-August issue that higher transactions tickets are helping to …
Read More »ISOs And NFC Specs Lend Impetus to Contactless Payment Trend
New technical specifications for so-called near-field communication (NFC), released this week by an international rules-setting body backing the technology, should add momentum in the U.S. to the trend toward contactless payments on mobile phones. “A lot's happening behind closed doors,” says Erik Michielsen, director of RFID and M2M research at …
Read More »MobileLime Recruits First ISO in Effort to Sell Merchants Nationally
Seeking to broaden its reach as it rolls out to merchants nationally, Vayusa Inc. has begun to recruit independent sales organizations to sell its MobileLime cell-phone-based loyalty and rewards system. MobileLime, which earlier this year signed its first merchant outside the Northeast, this week announced Vision Payments Solutions LLC, a …
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