Acquiring

Boosted by higher charge volume on its cards, American Express Co. on Monday reported in its first-quarter financials that discount revenue grew 13% to $2.97 billion, up 13% from $2.64 billion in 2005's first quarter. The travel-and-entertainment giant however, warned of “some erosion” in the average discount rate in the …

Long quiet on the reseller front, First National Merchant Solutions is signing up independent sales organizations as part of a strategic shift mapped out by its new president, Diana M. Mehochko. The merchant-acquiring unit of First National Bank of Omaha signed up half a dozen ISOs last year and is …

Putting his best spin on a tough situation, processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) chief executive Philip W. Tomlinson today said he regards the credit card industry’s top three issuers as prospects for future business, even as all three begin or plan to take tens of millions of accounts off …

Speaking to an audience of merchant processors, acquirers, and independent sales organizations, Visa USA's president and chief executive today promised the giant bank card network will become more open to non-issuers and responsive to their concerns, including matters related to operating regulations and data security. Appointed only nine months ago …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …