Leading payment processor First Data Corp. late Tuesday reported its first quarterly profit since being taken private in a $29 billion leveraged buyout by investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in 2007. Net income wasn’t big, $11.8 million, but it beat the $123.1 million loss Atlanta-based First Data reported …
Read More »A New Card Aims to Combat Data Breaches with Unique Numbers for Each Transaction
Consumers are weary of dealing with the fallout from data breaches and want a better way to minimize their risk. The backers of Final, a new credit card with online-management tools that can set spending caps and produce virtual card numbers tied to specific merchants, hope to alleviate some of …
Read More »Higher Transaction Volumes Help Boost MasterCard’s Quarterly Profit by 21%
Boosted by higher transaction volumes both in the United States and abroad, MasterCard Inc. on Friday reported a 21% increase, adjusted for foreign-currency effects, in net income for 2014’s fourth quarter. The No. 2 payment network posted an $801 million profit versus $684 million a year earlier on net revenues …
Read More »Visa Chief Scharf Holds out Digital Payments As Olive Branch to Fee-Weary Retailers
In the wake of an important Supreme Court decision early last week, Visa Inc.’s chief executive Thursday afternoon sounded a conciliatory note on the company’s often fraught relations with merchants and touted Visa’s digital-payments initiatives as a way of bringing more value to retailers in return for the fees they …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: Card Volume Up for AmEx And Discover, But AmEx To Cut Jobs
American Express Co. reported $182.5 billion in U.S. card-billed business in the fourth quarter, up 7.9% from $169.1 billion a year earlier, and discount-fee revenues increased 1.8% to $4.99 billion from $4.90 billion. The average worldwide discount rate, however, decreased three basis points to 2.45% of the sale. American Express …
Read More »U.S. Card Producers Prepare To Crank Out EMV Cards in Big Numbers
By Jim Daly U.S. credit and debit card issuers will be mailing hundreds of millions of Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards to their customers this year and next now that the payment card networks’ EMV liability shift looms just eight months away. Estimates about chip card issuance vary, but all involve …
Read More »Restaurateurs Look to Tablets And Kiosks To Fuse In-Store, Digital Commerce
CKE Restaurants Inc., parent of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. fast-food chains, and TGI Fridays Inc. are using Microsoft Corp. technology to speed up the ordering and purchase process in their restaurants, the Redmond, Wash.-based computing giant announced on Monday. Carrollton, Texas-based TGI Fridays is putting 8-inch tablets into the …
Read More »Obama Proposes National Breach Notification And Privacy Laws in Wake of Data Thefts
In the wake of a barrage of data thefts affecting tens of millions of U.S. citizens, President Barack Obama on Monday proposed national legislation to regulate breach notification. Other legislation proposed by Obama would ban companies from selling student data to other organizations for non-educational uses and from using information …
Read More »Merchant Processor Global Payments Reports Strong Second-Quarter Financials
By Digital Transactions News Staff Bolstered by solid growth in the U.S. and Asia, merchant processor Global Payments Inc. on Thursday reported total revenues of $697.3 million for its second quarter of fiscal 2015 ended Nov. 30, up 10% from $634.1 million a year earlier. Second-quarter net income increased only …
Read More »Rash of Chain Breaches Casts Spotlight on Unique Vulnerabilities of Franchised Businesses
News of a possible card-data breach at chicken-sandwich chain Chick-fil-A caps a year that saw a number of franchised businesses compromised and throws into relief what some experts say is the unique security vulnerability of the franchise business model. Franchised chains, in which so-called owner-operators run stores under a license …
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