News

October, 2005

• 25 October

  Volume Grows for AmEx, As Does Dependence on Acquiring

  U.S. transaction volume for American Express Co. grew nearly 19% in the third quarter, to $89 billion, over the year-ago period, the New York-based travel-and-entertainment company reported. Its U.S. card base increased 10%, to 42 million, of which 31.9 million are so-called basic cards. The U.S. accounts for nearly three-quarters …
• 25 October

  Survey: Popularity Propels Gift Cards into Consumer Mainstream

  Some 59% of adults, or an estimated 131 million people?either bought or received a gift card over the year from August 2004 to August 2005, a study released today reveals. In part, this has meant that the electronic stored value cards are gaining popularity as gifts for a more diverse …
• 21 October

  Data Breaches, State Laws Drive Encryption Business for Ingrian

  Widespread publicity surrounding the huge data breach at CardSystems Solutions Inc., coupled with a movement among the states to require disclosure of data compromises, is driving business for companies specializing in data security. “Consumers are up in arms about enterprises not taking security seriously enough,” says Karim Toubba, vice president …
• 21 October

  PayPal Stuck at About 70% in eBay Volume, Though Accounts Boom

  PayPal Inc. may be trying to process more transactions for e-commerce sites independent of its parent company, giant online auctioneer eBay Inc., but its latest quarterly figures indicate it still depends on eBay's auction activity for 69% of its transaction volume, a ratio that has remained virtually unchanged for months. …
• 19 October

  PayPal Will Use VeriSign’s Gateway to Plunge Deeper into Acquiring

  PayPal Inc. will use the transaction gateway it is buying from VeriSign Inc. for $370 million to thrust itself even more deeply into the business of acquiring transactions for small off-eBay Internet merchants, a senior executive for the transaction-processing unit of eBay Inc. tells Digital Transactions News. PayPal, which this …
• 19 October

  Britain’s OFT Says Visa’s Interchange Pricing Is Anti-Competitive

  The United Kingdom's Office of Fair Trading today said interchange fees paid by Visa acquirers to Visa issuers in the U.K. are anti-competitive, an action that could lead to regulatory action against the fee structure. In what it calls a “statement of objections,” the OFT said Visa's interchange structure, formally …
• 18 October

  How Pay By Touch Plans to Rely on CardSystems’ ISOs to Ramp up Fast

  Pay By Touch Solutions, which earlier this week said it will buy the assets of CardSystems Solutions Inc. for an undisclosed price (Digital Transactions News, Oct. 17), plans to rely on the Atlanta processor's links with some 27 independent sales organizations to help sell its biometric-payments product to tens of …
• 17 October

  Pay By Touch Trumps Bid from CyberSource for CardSystems

  Pay By Touch Solutions, which said over the weekend it will buy the assets of troubled card processor CardSystems Solutions Inc. for an undisclosed price, apparently trumped an earlier bid for the same assets from CyberSource Corp. CyberSource, which withdrew on Saturday the offer it had made Sept. 23, says …
• 14 October

  Expedited Bill Payments Grow at Double-Digit Rates, Go More Electronic

  So-called expedited bill payments are rapidly growing in volume in the U.S., and are also becoming increasingly electronic as remote-payment channels like the Internet gain transaction share from traditional walk-in channels. That's one conclusion TowerGroup, a Needham, Mass.-based payments-research firm, has come to in two studies released this week. Expedited …
• 13 October

  Phishing E-Mails Fell, But Phishing And Malware Sites Rose, in August

  The number of unique e-mail campaigns sent as part of phishing frauds fell in August to 13,776, almost 400 fewer than in July and the lowest number since March, according to statistics released today by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a consortium of payments processors, software vendors, and law-enforcement agencies that …