News

December, 2005

• 5 December

  Survey: Interest in Micropayments Rising Fast Among Consumers

  The willingness of U.S. consumers to use credit or debit cards to buy things like cups of coffee or cans of soda is rising fast, according to a survey being released this week at a conference in New York on micropayments, or transactions for less than $5. Some 21% of …
• 2 December

  PayPal’s Small Bite of Physical Stored Value May Herald Bigger Things

  In a move that could herald a thrust into the rapidly growing point-of-sale stored-value payments market, PayPal Inc. is processing prepaid accounts behind cafeteria payments for its own employees as well as for those of two other technology companies in Silicon Valley. For the past year, the online-payments processor, a …
• 1 December

  Is the ‘Dirty Little Secret’ of NSF Revenue Hiking Signature-Debit Profits?

  Has the explosion in consumer usage of signature-based debit cards created a bonanza for banks in fees charged for insufficient funds? At least one analyst thinks so. “It's the dirty little secret in the industry,” says Steve Mott, a former MasterCard executive and principal at BetterBuyDesign, a Stamford, Conn., consultancy. …
• 1 December

  ATM-Owning Banks Earn $4.3 Billion As Surcharges Hit Record High

  ATM-owning banks are earning $4.3 billion annually on charges they levy on transactions cardholders perform on so-called foreign machines?ATMs owned by banks where the cardholder is not a customer, according to a semi-annual study released today by Bankrate Inc., North Palm Beach, Fla., an aggregator of financial data. The average …

November, 2005

• 29 November

  Back at First Data’s Helm, Duques Faces Major Growth Challenges

  The new chief executive of First Data Corp. is likely to bring renewed focus to the processing giant's merchant-acquiring business and move quickly to resolve the drag on growth represented by the company's processing business that supports card issuers, say industry observers. At the same time, Henry C. (Ric) Duques, …
• 28 November

  E-commerce Sites Build Volume, Pass Critical Performance Tests

  Both transaction volume and site performance overall gave online merchants reasons to smile in the weekend leading up to “Cyber Monday,” the day experts say is the busiest shopping day of the year online. Merchants appear to have souped up their servers to meet increasing traffic, as well as rising …
• 28 November

  Shareholders OK MasterCard’s Plans for a Public Stock Offering

  The banks that own MasterCard Inc. cleared the way today for the bank card network to offer stock to the public and to reconstitute its governing board. By an overwhelming margin in a special meeting of shareholders, MasterCard’s shareholders approved the company’s proposal for an initial public offering that will …
• 25 November

  BioPay Looks for Big Year for Biometric Payments in 2006

  This may be the year contactless payment gained a foothold among banks and merchants, but another technology?biometrically secured point-of-sale payments?is starting to gain momentum, as well. BioPay LLC, a provider of the technology for both POS transactions and payroll check-cashing, says it expects in 2006 to double, and possibly triple, …
• 23 November

  Absence of Fee Break Could Hinder RFID’s Penetration of Cash

  The U.S. cash-payment market is enormous, but banks' hopes of penetrating it with so-called contactless technology could falter if high acceptance costs spur merchants to look at alternative electronic payment methods. That's one among a number of findings in a new study released this week on the market for transactions …
• 22 November

  E-Commerce Sales Jump 26.7%, Reach Record Share of Overall Retail

  U.S. e-commerce sales totaled $22.3 billion in the third quarter, up 26.7% from the year-ago period, according to statistics released today by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Transactions on the Internet now account for 2.3% of all U.S. retail sales, according to the latest figures, the highest share yet for …