Issuing/Originating

The prepaid card market closed in on half-a-trillion dollars in load volume last year, new data from Mercator Advisory Group Inc. show. Volumes on closed-loop cards grew 14% and loads on the newer open-loop cards increased 24%, according to Mercator’s ninth annual study of U.S. prepaid cards. In all, Maynard, …

The massive deal PayPal Inc. and Discover Financial Services announced on Wednesday that will bring online-payments leader PayPal to 7 million physical U.S. merchant locations has all the hallmarks of electronic payments in the 21st Century’s second decade, including digital wallets and cloud-based technology. But the foundation of the deal …

The nation’s biggest debit card issuers have reversed polarity and are now promoting PIN-debit cards over signature debit and small-value transactions over bigger tickets, if the results of a debit study released this week are any indication. “Certainly, there’s a fundamental shift under way” among large banks to focus on …

Worried about getting too far in debt and nearly oblivious to the ongoing debate in the banking and payments industries about the controversial Durbin Amendment, consumers in June continued to display their allegiance to debit cards, according to new figures from First Data Corp. The nation’s leading payment card processor …

With much of the nascent mobile-payments business concentrated on consumer access via streamlined applications rather than browsers, news emerged this week that handset users are rapidly adopting apps. Indeed, usage of downloaded apps crossed the 50% mark in March and stood at 51.1% in May, according to figures released this …

New Jersey has delayed implementation of the most onerous provisions of an unclaimed-property law affecting gift cards that caused American Express Co. and two major gift card distributors to pull out of the state this spring. The changes Gov. Chris Christie signed into law last week, however, don’t repeal the …

American Express Co. announced what it calls its “roadmap” for EMV and chip-based and mobile payments in the U.S., which means all four of the major U.S.-based payment card networks are now on record with plans to move beyond the magnetic-stripe payment card. Like the ones from MasterCard Inc. and …

Citing “ever-increasing student college expenses,” Heartland Payment Systems Inc. reported on Tuesday that it would eliminate three fees on its student-aid prepaid card. Heartland’s move comes a few weeks after the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), a prominent consumer advocacy group, issued a report highly critical of the …

The Visa Debit train in Canada picked up speed this week when one of the country’s major banks, TD Canada Trust, introduced a debit card that uses the Visa network for card-not-present and international transactions. TD Canada Trust brings to three the number of Canadian banks offering Visa Debit since …

The music and movie industries as well as retailers are next on startup Dynamics Inc.’s list of targeted industries for its ePlate loyalty application. Launched in April, ePlate embeds computer architecture into a credit card, enabling consumers to rewrite information from a choice of loyalty programs to the card’s magnetic …