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, …
Read More »VeriFone Gains Wireless-Terminal Strength with Lipman Acquisition
VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s proposed $793 million acquisition of rival Lipman Electronics Engineering Ltd. will give the U.S.'s leading payment terminal maker access to more countries and the fast-growing wireless-terminal segment, a processing analyst tells Digital Transactions News. “The advantage for VeriFone is to get into more countries offshore,” says Jamie …
Read More »New Merchants Will Fuel Contactless Growth, But Trouble Lurks
Shipments of contactless-payment transponders–the cards, keyfobs, and other devices consumers use to make radio-wave payments at the point of sale?will explode in 2006, reaching 45 million units, up from 13 million last year, according to ABI Research, an Oyster Bay, N.Y., research firm that follows radio-frequency-identification technology markets. Most of …
Read More »Seven Are Nabbed in Big PIN Hack Case, with More Arrests Coming
Authorities nabbed seven individuals this week as part of the U.S. Secret Service's newly disclosed Operation Rolling Stone undercover effort against cybercrime and payment card fraud, and more arrests are expected, a Secret Service spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News. Though the Secret Service is being cautious about releasing details of …
Read More »Report: Remote Deposit Capture Is More ‘Talk’ Than ‘Action’ for Now
It's one of the major products to emerge from the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21) signed into law in 2003, but remote deposit capture still has yet to make major headway despite getting some major bank backers and its promise of reducing the amount of paper …
Read More »Fujitsu Does Damage Control While Utility Software Gains Attention
In the spin-the-bottle game of assessing blame for the massive debit card breach that has compromised an estimated 600,000 accounts, point-of-sale software developer Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc. late last week suddenly found itself the recipient of unwelcome publicity when its name came up in a Visa USA alert about card …
Read More »More Aussie Retailers Plan Surcharges for Credit Card Payments
In news that should interest those in the U.S electronic transactions business who are contemplating the possible effects of regulation of card interchange pricing, a new study shows that an increasing number of merchants in Australia?which three years ago introduced regulation of the fees merchants pay acquirers on card payments–are …
Read More »Huge Hack Threatens to Cool off Torrid Growth of PIN Debit Payments
Security experts warn that the recently exposed case of widespread debit card fraud could jeopardize the growth of PIN debit. Debit card transactions secured by PINs have been growing by 20% or more annually in recent years, more than twice as fast as credit cards. “I think it is a …
Read More »Back-Office Conversion To Get a Vote Soon, May Start in September
A new form of automated clearing house payment that merchants could use to convert checks into electronic funds transfers could become a reality by September. A proposal from NACHA for so-called back-office conversion, which would allow businesses to collect consumer checks from points of sale and convert them later on …
Read More »Losses Could Top $1 Billion from Debit Card Hack, Hurting PIN Debit
The widening damage from the unfolding debit card hacking incident is challenging the conventional wisdom that PIN-based debit cards are inherently more secure than credit cards, which rely on signatures?though it still doesn't make a case for chip cards. That's according to one expert whose latest estimates are that this …
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