Competitive Strategies

The concept of an all-digital check, which surfaced in a paper published in November by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, could move from theory to reality in a matter of months now that a technology startup in Atlanta has won a pair of patents covering applications of the idea. …

Competition in the bill-to-carrier mobile payments market is heating up with Verizon Wireless's announcement it will offer the service directly to consumers through Danal Inc.'s BilltoMobile payment service within the next few weeks. The deal marks Seoul, Korea-based mobile payments operator Danal's first contract in the U.S. Danal is in …

Growing independent sales organization FrontStream Payments Inc. made another deal last week that could be a sign that merger-and-acquisition activity in the merchant-acquiring industry is warming up after a recession-induced chill. The transaction also illustrates that private-equity firms see the merchant-acquiring space as a fertile ground for new investments. In …

The merchant-acquirer encryption and tokenization train picked up speed this week when Fifth Third Processing Solutions, one of the nation's biggest payment processors, announced it would offer its merchants end-to-end encryption and tokenization systems for protecting cardholder data. Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Processing's technology comes from Voltage Security Inc., the Palo …

Discover Financial Services now has more than 100 bank card merchant acquirers booking small to medium-sized merchants for its network, the company reported today at an investor presentation in New York City. Discover predicts that those acquirers will enable Discover acceptance in 97% of their new merchant sales in 2010's …

First Data Corp., which for the past couple of years has been pushing its Go Tag contactless-sticker technology, announced on Tuesday it will promote a new contactless technology for mobile phones based on Secure Digital memory cards. But the massive Atlanta-based processor says the move will have no impact on …

The continuing boom in general-purpose prepaid cards will lift all providers' boats, but some industry players will see revenues grow faster than others, according to new report from Aite Group LLC. The Boston-based research firm estimates that the total revenue pie of the so-called network-branded prepaid card industry will grow …

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty submitted his budget plan to Parliament late last week, and his proposals have merchants celebrating. That's because the government is floating the idea of regulating the payment card networks and, by implication, credit and debit card interchange. “There was good news for retailers in yesterday's …

Remote deposit capture by mobile phone, a recent technology still considered experimental by many bankers, has proven itself in deployments so far, a banking researcher said on Monday. “The technology is demonstrably ready for broad adoption,” Robert Meara, a senior analyst at Celent LLC, told attendees at a banking conference. …

Processing volume hit some turbulence last year, but that didn't stop Universal Air Travel Plan Inc. from pursing its goal of adding merchants to its airline-owned network. Washington, D.C.-based UATP last week reported that LQ Management LLC's La Quinta Inns & Suites has become the first hotel chain in the …