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The state of Michigan has joined a trend, developing for the past couple of years, toward replacing paper benefit checks with electronic payment. The state on Tuesday announced it has started offering debit cards and direct-deposit options to citizens eligible to receive unemployment benefits. Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA), which …
Read More »Researcher Sees Issuers’ Service Providers as PCI ‘Hot Spots’
Six specialty types of vendors, processors, and other service providers that card issuers use lack specific guidelines on how to protect cardholder data under the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, according to a recent report from research firm TowerGroup Inc. These service providers thus represent “hot spots” that …
Read More »Visa Extends Fraud-Recovery Process to PIN-Debit Transactions
Visa Inc. is extending to PIN debit cards a process for reporting and recovering fraud losses from data breaches. In effect for credit cards and the Visa check cards since October 2006, the process, dubbed Account Data Compromise Recovery, will apply to Visa's Interlink point-of-sale debit and Plus ATM networks …
Read More »Robust for Years, Debit Growth Expected to Weaken, Study Says
Perhaps the hottest payment product going for the past several years, debit cards are showing signs of cooling off. “It's almost become a broken record that debit transactions are growing at double-digit rates, but we're seeing a slowing in that rate,” Tony Hayes, a partner at research and consulting firm …
Read More »WaMu’s Contactless Plunge Could Win over Skeptical Merchants
Washington Mutual Inc.'s announcement this week that it plans to issue 12 million to 15 million debit cards with MasterCard Inc.'s PayPass contactless functionality this year may do more than make the $328 billion bank the No. 1 PayPass issuer. It just might give the nascent contactless market enough critical …
Read More »After BOC’s First Year, Ex-Banker Laments Slow Start for E-Check
One year after its launch, an option that lets merchants deposit checks electronically in centralized locations by converting the paper items into automated clearing house debits is growing more slowly than expected, according to a payments executive who led the effort to write the rules for the new option. Back-office …
Read More »Banks Must Recruit Consumers to Fight ID Fraud, Researcher Warns
Losses to identity fraud will be hard to reduce unless banks and other financial-services providers begin working harder to recruit consumers to look after their own accounts, a noted researcher said on Wednesday. “The important change that needs to happen today is a much stronger partnership between the person who …
Read More »Wal-Mart Exec Happy with MoneyCard, But Stays Mum on Details
Jane Thompson, the head of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Financial Services unit, revealed some interesting tidbits on Tuesday about the No. 1 retailer's payment services, but she didn't answer one question many in her audience of 2,200 was asking regarding the widely watched Wal-Mart MoneyCard: how many of the prepaid cards …
Read More »Visa Filing Confirms Heavy Investment in Merchant And Issuer Incentives
Recent research by Aite Group LLC estimated the Visa and MasterCard bank card networks paid nearly $5 billion to merchants and card issuers between 2005 and 2007 to spur acceptance or issuance of their respective brands (Digital Transactions News, Feb. 20). Visa Inc.'s latest registration statement, filed Monday in advance …
Read More »Citi Makes a Down Payment on M-Payments with ViVOtech Stake
Getting financial institutions and telecommunications providers to agree on major issues related to mobile payments is one of the most difficult problems faced by the nascent mobile-payments industry. Nonetheless, some banks want to plant a stake on the mobile-payments turf early, as evidenced by the announcement this week that Citigroup …
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