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In an effort to become easier for merchant acquirers, merchants, and card issuers to deal with, Visa Inc. late this year will eliminate almost 50% of its operating rules, which currently total more than 1,500 pages, chief executive Charles W. Scharf said Thursday. Scharf made that revelation at Visa’s second-quarter …
Read More »It’s ‘Fits and Starts’ in Mobile-Payments Evolution, Finds An IDC Survey
An industry as intrinsic to commerce as electronic payments is unlikely to make wholesale moves to new technologies like mobile payments. That applies to consumers, too, who appear to be moderating their use of mobile payments. Data from the IDC Financial Insights 2014 Consumer Payments Survey reveal that consumer …
Read More »American Express Adds Wal-Mart to the Distribution Network for Its Serve Prepaid Card
American Express Co. deepened its prepaid card relationship with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with Monday’s announcement that its Serve card will be sold in 4,100 U.S. Walmart-branded stores. The Walmart stores also will become part of Serve’s cash-reload network, boosting its location count to 19,500. Serve’s thus will become the biggest …
Read More »In a Sudden About-Face, Wal-Mart Stops Gift Card Sales Through Gyft E-Card Service
Less than a month after electronic gift card provider Gyft announced it was selling Wal-Mart Stores Inc. gift cards, they no longer are available. According to a report on Coindesk.com, a digital-currency news site, Gyft stopped offering Wal-Mart gift cards on April 13. Gyft provides electronic gift card services for …
Read More »Euronet’s Money-Transfer Business Poised To Get a Big Lift From New Wal-Mart Deal
It may be headquartered in Leawood, Kan., but payment-services provider Euronet Worldwide Inc. looks abroad for most of its revenues. Thanks to a new deal with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., however, Euronet’s Ria unit is about to become a major force in domestic wire transfers. Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart on Thursday unveiled …
Read More »In a Move Aimed at Aggregators And Small Sellers, Visa Tweaks FANF Fees Effective April 2015
Visa Inc. has tweaked its controversial fixed acquirer network fee (FANF), with the changes scheduled to take effect 12 months from now, according to sources who have seen the changes. A bulletin Visa released last week and circulated to acquirers indicates the modifications to the 2-year-old FANF are aimed chiefly …
Read More »With MintChip for Sale, Can Digital Currencies Outlast S&H Green Stamps?
In the wake of Bitcoin’s continuing problems with price volatility and unstable processors, the future of virtual currencies got even cloudier over the past week on news that the Royal Canadian Mint plans to sell its MintChip digital-currency system. Rumors that MintChip was on the block had been circulating …
Read More »NACHA’s New Same-Day Settlement Plan Draws Plenty of Questions From a Curious Crowd
You might call it the first stop on a long road show looming for automated clearing house network oversight body NACHA’s new proposal for same-day settlement of ACH transactions. The particular stop was a packed session at NACHA’s annual payments conference on Tuesday, where executives from financial institutions and payments …
Read More »Leaf Adds a Merchant Services Provider Referral Marketplace
Tablet-based point-of-sale provider Leaf Holdings Inc. is providing a marketplace to help merchant service providers find merchants. Dubbed Payments Apps, the service provides a free listing with the payment company’s contact information and a description of up to 2,000 characters. Payment companies pay $10 per month per merchant if the …
Read More »Using Payment Card Data, Index Brings Personalized Shopping to In-Store Customers
E-commerce retailers have a unique advantage over their brick-and-mortar counterparts. They typically know quite a bit about a shopper’s purchasing habits, and that helps them create personalized offers that bring back customers to spend more. Index, a San Francisco-based company, hopes to give large brick-and-mortar retailers a tool to enable …
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