News

January, 2005

• 6 January

  Visa Holiday Volume Up 15.7%, as Transactions Peak Christmas Eve

  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%, …
• 5 January

  TechTrans Begins Service to Deliver and Install ATMs for Makers

  Technical Transportation Inc. announces it has added ATM support to its delivery service for high-value, heavy machines. The 15-year-old company, based in Dallas, says it will now deliver, install, and test ATMs, bringing them from manufacturer to location and working through a network of agents and technicians. The company says …
• 5 January

  USPTO Will Re-Examine CyberSource’s Patent at ReD’s Request

  The United States Patent and Trademark Office has said it will re-examine a patent granted in 2000 to CyberSource Corp. that lies at the heart of a patent-infringement suit the Mountain View, Calif.-based processor filed last August against rival Retail Decisions PLC (ReD) and its U.S. operation, Retail Decisions Inc. …
• 3 January

  C-Store Chain Sheetz Is First Merchant to Adopt PayPass Chainwide

  Sheetz Inc. will install MasterCard International's PayPass tap-and-go payment system in all 305 of its stores by March 1, the two companies have announced. Sheetz, a top-10 operator of convenience stores based in Altoona, Pa., says it hopes the radio-frequency-based system will add to customer convenience by cutting transaction time …
• 3 January

  Sovereign Re-ups with First Data for Merchant Processing

  Sovereign Bank has renewed a merchant-processing contract with First Data Corp., the Denver-based processor has announced. The five-year deal represents an extension of Sovereign Merchant Services, which was established in 2001 as one of a number of alliance agreements First Data has concluded with banks in which FDC provides merchant-transaction …

December, 2004

• 29 December

  UnitedHealth Moves Toward 20 Million Cards for Claims, Payments

  UnitedHealth Group is on track to issue as many as 20 million cards that consumers can one day use for a dual purpose: to handle eligibility verification and other point-of-care payment transactions and as a debit card to electronically access funds from a health-savings account. To date UnitedHealth has issued …
• 28 December

  iPayment Clinches a $130-Million Merchant Deal with First Data

  Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization iPayment Inc. expects on Friday to close on its $130 million cash acquisition of a merchant portfolio from First Data Corp. The portfolio consists of 25,000 small merchant accounts generating $9 billion to $10 billion in annual card volume. First Data Merchant Services will continue …
• 27 December

  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 …
• 23 December

  LexisNexis Looks to ID for Transactions As Its Next Step

  With the unrelenting rise of phishing attacks, banks and merchants are hunting for new ways to secure the identity of consumers in online transactions. That's creating opportunities for companies like LexisNexis, proprietor of one of the world's largest databases of public-record information. Now the company's RiskWise unit is looking at …
• 20 December

  Popularity of Gift Cards May Cause a Problem for Online Merchants

  The expected surge in gift cards received this holiday season may cause a problem for online merchants that try to match billing addresses given by consumers at checkout with those on file with issuers before authorizing transactions, says ClearCommerce Corp. Online retailers will usually set their address-verification systems (AVS) to …