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Visa reports the holiday shopping season generated a 15.7% increase in dollar volume on its card products compared to the same time last year, with volume reaching $218.7 billion on all Visa-branded cards in the Nov. 1 to Jan. 2 period. Consumer spending on the company's debit cards grew 26.2%, …
Read More »Visa: Consumer Spending Surged in Stores on Christmas Eve
Consumer holiday spending surged ahead on Christmas Eve, according to new data released over the weekend by Visa USA. The card company says total spending on its credit and online and signature-based debit cards last Friday came to more than $4.35 billion, up 11.7% from Christmas Eve last year, ranking …
Read More »CVS Will Roll Out AmEx’s ExpressPay, But AmEx Loses Walgreen’s
It has been an eventful week for American Express Co. Today the company announced that Woonsocket, R.I.-based drugstore chain CVS Corp. has agreed to serve as the first national merchant to accept ExpressPay, an AmEx system that relies on radio waves rather than card swipes to authorize transactions. This news …
Read More »AmEx-Citi Is Great PR for AmEx, But How Profitable Will It Really Be?
Citigroup Inc.'s decision to issue American Express cards may turn out to be a more symbolic than substantive victory in the credit card wars for AmEx, according to some observers. “It's clearly a victory, but more a marketing victory,” says Gwenn Bezard, a payments-industry analyst at New York-based research firm …
Read More »Visa Logs Busiest Weekend Yet for This Year’s Holiday Season
Visa U.S.A. says spending on its cards over the past weekend was the strongest yet seen this holiday shopping season, exceeding spending during the so-called Black Friday weekend after Thanksgiving by 15%. Indeed, Black Friday itself now ranks third in Visa spending, behind the volume reached this past Friday and …
Read More »Two Canadian Companies Begin a U.S. Expansion for Online Debit
Two rival online payment companies in Canada are making moves to expand the market for Web-based debit payments to the U.S. Toronto-based UseMyBank Services Inc. has linked with processors in both Europe and the U.S., while Othentik Technologies Inc., Montreal, has signed a deal to license its software to US …
Read More »Fed Study Says Electronic Payments Exceed Checks for the First Time
Electronic transactions in the U.S. now exceed check payments for the first time, while checks have gone from 57% of all non-cash payments to 45% in only three years, according to a Federal Reserve System report released today. There were 44.5 billion electronic payment transactions in the U.S. last year, …
Read More »Visa’s Web, QSR Volume Get a Big Boost from ‘Black Friday’ Activity
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 …
Read More »Visa Report: Early Holiday Spending Drives Big Jumps in Transactions
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 …
Read More »AmEx’s Big Lawsuit: A Power Play Through the Banks?
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 …
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