Acquiring

MasterCard prepaid cards received new utility this week when MasterCard Worldwide launched a network of retailers, dubbed MasterCard rePower, at whose locations cardholders can use cash to add value to MasterCard- and Maestro-branded prepaid cards. The first rePower reload transaction took place Monday at a Village Pantry convenience store in …

Mutual need brought Electronic Clearing House Inc. (ECHO) and Intuit Inc. together in the $142 million deal, announced last week, that will make Camarillo, Calif-based processor ECHO part of Intuit, Mountain View, Calif., some time in the first quarter (Digital Transactions News, Dec. 15). Intuit, marketer of the popular QuickBooks …

Intuit Inc. has notched yet another acquisition calculated to augment its widely used accounting software with electronic-payments capability by agreeing to pay $142 million in cash to buy Electronic Clearing House Inc. (ECHO), a publicly held, Camarillo, Calif.-based processor of card and automated clearing house transactions. The deal, which is …

PayPal Inc., the online payment service of online auction firm eBay Inc., has signed another big company in its quest to expand beyond eBay users, and the processor says more such clients are coming next year. This week, Monster, the leading online job-search and recruitment service, said it has begun …

Hoping to push up compliance with its data-security rules, Visa USA on Tuesday announced first-ever incentives?including cash payments–to go along with new penalties for acquiring banks that serve the 1,200 largest Visa-accepting merchants. The carrot-and-stick package, intended to get acquirers to bring more merchants into compliance with the Payment Card …

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. is working on a technology platform that would support multiple accounting and transaction functions on a single card, the processor's chairman and chief executive revealed in a presentation last week. Speaking to an audience of merchants, processors, and bankers interested in converting small-value cash payments to …

A new electronic check-conversion application set to go live in March at retail and other check-accepting businesses could become one of the fastest-growing products ever introduced for the automated clearing house (ACH) network, generating 425 million transactions in 2007, predicts a new study from Boston-based market researcher Celent LLC. The …

In a move aimed at addressing widespread fears about e-commerce security, MagTek Inc. has launched a company to commercialize its card-based authentication technology and leverage it for both online and point-of-sale transactions. Magensa LLC, a subsidiary of the Carson, Calif., maker of check scanners and card-terminal components, officially began operation …

Online merchants' fraud losses will hit $3 billion in 2006, up 7% over last year, but the overall growth in e-commerce means fraud as a proportion of sales will dip slightly, to 1.4% from 1.6%. This mixed news comes as Web merchants adopt an increasing array of alternatives to bank-issued …

In the latest of its so-called Data Security Alerts aimed at strengthening merchant payment card security, Visa USA is putting the spotlight on point-of-sale systems that provide electronic on-ramps for fraudsters. In particular, Visa wants merchants to remedy the vulnerabilities of what it calls “improperly segmented network environments.” Merchants can …