Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Entrepreneur Steve Case, whose founding of America Online Inc. helped popularize the Internet, told an audience of bankers on Monday that his new venture is set to shake up electronic payments by dramatically slashing costs for merchants and consumers. Case's remarks came on the same day that venture, St. Petersburg, …
Read More »Recession Is Boosting Some Prepaid Cards, But Profits Are Lagging
Prepaid cards branded by one of the national payment card networks are benefting most from the recession, but prepaid profitability overall is suffering, according to a survey of prepaid card executives whose results were released in a report this week. The survey, conducted by payments-research firm Aite Group LLC at …
Read More »Fraudsters Beef up Attacks on Checks As the ‘Weakest Link’
Check volumes may be declining, but check-related crime remains by far the most common type of payment fraud reported by corporate financial officers. What's more, while overall losses still remain small, fraud attempts increased last year and the recession could be a cause, according to the Association for Financial Professionals. …
Read More »Now in Pilot, Visa’s Consumer Alerts Set to Roll out Later This Year
Visa Inc. is taking steps to more actively recruit consumers in its fraud-fighting efforts, including the development of an early-warning system that notifies cardholders in real-time when their cards are being used. Visa's Transaction Alert system, currently in pilot at banks including U.S. Bank, PNC Corp., and Wells Fargo & …
Read More »A New Service Lets Car Renters Pay Tolls with RFID Transponders
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 …
Read More »‘Difficult’ Times Hammer the Centurion’s Card And Acquiring Results
The message this week from the top brass at American Express Co. is: Times are bad, but no worse at AmEx than elsewhere in the payments industry. American Express, the third-largest payment card network, is still making money, though a lot less of it: $172 million in the fourth quarter, …
Read More »That Sucking Sound Is the Downdraft in Big Banks’ Charge Volumes
The latest credit card charge-volume figures from the nation's top three banks show big declines, portending weak results when other issuers, merchant acquirers, and Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. report their fourth-quarter earnings in coming days. On Friday, Bank of America Corp. reported fourth-quarter purchase volume of $56.6 billion on …
Read More »How Some Retailers Have Bolstered Their Gift Cards’ Firepower
Closed-loop gift cards are not the new kids on the block any more, but some retailers in 2008's holiday shopping season found ways to wring more usage out of their cards despite the faltering economy and bad press about gift cards. That's the word from a newly released market assessment …
Read More »Banks Make Strides in Fighting ID Fraud, But Lag in Mobile Alerts
Financial institutions have made big strides in fighting identity fraud over the past year but still lag in preventing the crime by using such technologies as mobile alerts, according to a report released this week by Javelin Strategy & Research. “Despite so many consumers having mobile devices, banks are still …
Read More »U.S. Bank Hikes Contactless Adoption with Targeted Issuance
Nearly one-third of U.S. Bank customers who have been issued a contactless debit card have performed at least one contactless transaction since the bank's program began in June, an executive with the bank said on Wednesday. “So far, it's looking really promising,” Michael Shepard, group product manager for consumer credit …
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