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An outside manager with restructuring experience, Thomas Lumsden of FTI Consulting Inc., is now running financially troubled biometric-payment provider Pay By Touch under terms of a Delaware court order signed Friday, San Francisco-based Pay By Touch announced on Monday. The Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington appointed Lumsden, senior managing director …
Read More »Saddled with Post-IPO Debt, First Data Shaves Costs with Layoffs
The ax is falling at First Data Corp. two months after the huge processor's $29 billion leveraged buyout by private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data announced Thursday that it is cutting 6% of its workforce, or about 1,700 employees. Thanks to recent acquisitions, however, …
Read More »Firethorn Chief Says Qualcomm Deal Will Speed up M-Payments
Qualcomm Inc.'s $210 million cash deal for Firethorn Holdings Inc., announced on Wednesday, is expected to accelerate Firethorn's movement toward mobile payments and hands Qualcomm a significant stake in the rapidly developing markets for both banking and payments via handsets, according to Tripp Rackley, chief executive of Atlanta-based Firethorn. “All …
Read More »AT&T: 10 Million Phones Will Be Preloaded for Banking by End of ’08
AT&T Inc., which on Tuesday announced it is launching a nationwide mobile-banking service, expects to have 500,000 mobile phones preloaded with the software necessary for the service by the end of the year and 10 million handsets so equipped by the close of 2008, according to a senior executive with …
Read More »Its Overhaul Complete, Visa Shoots for the Moon with Its Pending IPO
Visa Inc. late Friday said it aims to raise $10 billion in its upcoming initial public offering of stock. The figure, while preliminary, is four times the $2.4 billion MasterCard Inc. grossed in its May 2006 IPO, the first chance the market had to value a bank card network. A …
Read More »Before IPO, Visa Reaches a $2.25 Billion AmEx Antitrust Settlement
In an attempt to clear away legal issues before its planned initial public stock offering next year, Visa Inc. today said it would pay rival American Express Co. more than $2 billion to settle an antitrust lawsuit AmEx brought seeking compensation for lost business during the years a Visa rule …
Read More »Pay By Touch Melodrama Includes Board Fight and Possible Bankruptcy
Biometrics payment technology provider Pay By Touch reaped a bushel of favorable publicity last week when it launched its fingerprint-based system at 10 Chicago-area Shell stations in the company's first petroleum-sector rollout. What went unmentioned, however, was that Pay By Touch's parent company was entangled in court fights on the …
Read More »BSG Extends Its Bill-to-Phone Service to Mobile Commerce
BSG Clearing Solutions has started talking to sellers of digital merchandise about using a new service that would allow them to take payment for games, songs, and other such goods by charging the items to consumers' wireless bills. The targeted sellers for the new service are so-called off-deck merchants, or …
Read More »Other Shoe Drops As USPTO Affirms Second DataTreasury Patent
For the second time this year, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has upheld a patent owned by DataTreasury Corp, a small software company that is suing major banks and processors for infringement of these and other electronic-payments patents it holds. In a document issued earlier this month to …
Read More »It’s Official: Synovus Will Spin off Processor TSYS in $600 Million Deal
Capping months of planning, bank-holding company Synovus Financial Corp. confirmed Thursday afternoon that it would spin off its entire 80.8% interest in payment card processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) to its shareholders. In doing so, Synovus brings up what is likely to be the rear of an extremely active …
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