Credit Cards

The breach-related troubles just keep piling on for merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., according to the acquirer's annual report filed on Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In the filing, Heartland revealed the data breach it sustained last year is under investigation not only by the U.S. …

Visa Inc. has kicked breached merchant acquirers Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and RBS WorldPay Inc. off of its list of processors compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI. That action sent the acquirers to a netherworld known as probation and triggered a debate in the payments industry …

Hypercom Corp. anticipates that the drop in its first-quarter revenues may be larger than in the past due to volatile currency exchange rates, the deteriorating economy, and a tightening credit market, said Philippe Tartavull, chief executive and president. “It is quite clear that our industry as a whole will contract …

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. will be releasing additional information on the recent data breach of one of its payment-processing platforms, though “I can't tell you how soon,” says Robert Carr, Heartland's chief executive. The Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer in January announced that malicious software, or malware, had been secretly planted …

Reduced buying from merchant acquirers, the stock-market downdraft, and currency fluctuations teamed up to take a big bite out of payment card terminal maker VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s latest financials. VeriFone late Tuesday reported a $182 million loss for its first fiscal 2009 quarter ended Jan. 31, and its boss predicts …

The U.S. alternative-payments market has already attracted a slew of startups over the past few years, and now it's drawing even more competition from overseas. Paymate Global Inc., the U.S. arm of Australian processor Paymate Pty Ltd., earlier this month completed its integration with eBay Inc.'s checkout system and joins …

Lower interchange rates in some cases for online retailers and travel-and-entertainment merchants that accept Visa credit cards and higher bank card authorization fees are set to take effect in the coming months. The good news for merchants is that seven of the 11 Visa consumer credit card interchange rates that …

Reports of yet another merchant-acquirer data breach are speeding around the Internet, but the card networks have not confirmed them publicly. Nor has any processor been identified. Merchant-acquiring sources, however, tell Digital Transaction News that multiple processors may have been breached in recent months. The non-profit Open Security Foundation, an …

A new service from specialty payment-services provider Highway Toll Administration LLC seeks to boost electronic toll-booth payments by making toll transponders available to customers who reserve rental cars through the big online travel booking site Travelocity.com. Great Neck, N.Y.-based HTA introduced the mail-order service, called TravelPass, Jan. 29. “The TravelPass …

It's no surprise, but it's still significant: retail electronic-commerce sales declined by more than 5% in the fourth quarter, the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported this week. “This is the first-ever quarterly decline year over year,” a Census Bureau spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News. The bureau began tracking e-commerce …