Credit Cards

Merchant channels that are converting to electronic payments, such as fast food, or are heavily dependent on them, such as the Internet, continue to benefit from the impetus lent by the holiday shopping season. Visa USA's credit and debit card statistics for so-called Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, indicate …

With a month to go until Christmas, holiday spending by consumers is driving double-digit increases in electronic transactions, according to the latest report from Visa USA, which is tracking spending on its cards each week from early November until early January. Total spending on all Visa-branded cards hit $23.1 billion …

American Express Co. Inc.'s decision to include eight banks as defendants in the lawsuit it filed earlier this week against Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc. may be a power play to weaken the bank card networks by widening policy differences between the networks and their major members, some …

In an announcement with far-reaching implications for the electronic payments business, Discover Financial Services Inc. announced today it is buying the Houston-based Pulse EFT Association for $311 million “and other strategic value.” The deal, which the parties say will close by mid January pending approval from regulators and Pulse members, …

Fraud losses will total $2.6 billion in 2004 for Internet merchants, 37% higher than last year, with smaller merchants suffering the worst fraud. That's according to the sixth annual survey of online fraud from CyberSource Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based transaction gateway for e-commerce sites. The survey, which gathered responses …

Hoping to increase its penetration in consumer bill payments to gas, electricity, and other utility companies, Visa USA today rolled out incentives for utilities to accept its cards and to encourage more card transactions. The incentives include a lower credit and check card interchange fee on certain consumer card transactions …

Purchase volume on MasterCard International credit and signature-based debit cards in the U.S. grew almost 8% in the third quarter, to $132.9 billion, the bank card company reported today. MasterCard credit cards registered growth of 6.9%, to $109.7 billion, well below worldwide growth of 11.2%. On the signature debit side, …

TransFirst, a Dallas-based processor that has grown significantly through acquisition over the past two years, has appointed two new executives to run its divisions concerned with independent sales organizations, agents, and resellers. Ryan O'Connor, formerly with Nova Information Systems, a unit of U.S. Bank, has become president of TransFirst's ISA …

The Web site for specialty charge card issuer Diner's Club scored 100% reliability and topped a new weekly test of both reliability and response time at nine credit card Web sites. The Diner's site posted a response time of 7.03 seconds, significantly ahead of the second-place site, Capital One (8.20 …

The number of Americans ages 12 and up who bought sub-$2 digital content online in the past year has ballooned to more than 14 million, up from 4 million a year ago, according to a survey released today. “The data suggest that the online micropayments market has grown significantly in …