News

August, 2005

• 16 August

  Accelitec Looks to Rising Interchange to Help Sell New RFID System

  A Seattle-based startup that has been quietly testing a contactless payment system intended to be branded and controlled by merchants is now marketing the system as a way for retailers to control rising card-acceptance costs. Accelitec Inc. says its PayPilot system, which includes token dispensers, tokens equipped with chip-and-transmitter inlays, …
• 15 August

  Paymentech-CMS Merger Positions JP Morgan Chase As Processor

  JPMorgan Chase & Co. will merge its two acquiring entities, Paymentech L.P. and Chase Merchant Services L.L.C., in a reorganization to be announced soon, sources tell Digital Transactions News. Details of the deal are sketchy at best, but at least one source familiar with the matter says the merger will …
• 12 August

  Scoring Models Get Results, Make Gains with Online Merchants

  Automated risk-scoring systems are starting to assume a higher profile among online merchants as they struggle to control transaction-fraud losses, rejection of valid orders on suspicion of fraud, and the costs of manual order review. David A. Glaser, director of professional services at CyberSource Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based transaction-processing …
• 12 August

  Top Australian Bank Regulator Defends Interchange Regulation

  In testimony today before a committee of the Australian house of representatives, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia stoutly defended the RBA's action last year to regulate credit card interchange rates in that country, claiming it has saved merchants some $447 million (US) in the past year and …
• 11 August

  The Dark Side of Stored Value: Bad Debt for Web Retailers

  The booming business in gift and other stored-value cards, which represent an increasing share of sales for merchants of all sizes, is beginning to have an ominous side effect for online merchants: a hike in bad debt. The prepaid plastic, which carries a fixed value in cash and can benefit …
• 10 August

  FDC May Emerge As Bigger Winner in Merchant Deal with Citi

  Citigroup Inc.'s decision to bail out of the merchant-acquiring business, which was announced yesterday, could benefit both the banking kingpin and the buyer of the 15,000-location portfolio, processing giant First Data Corp. But Denver-based FDC may emerge as the bigger winner, some observers say, now that Citi has decided to …
• 10 August

  How Kabira Is Using Beefier Memory to Drive Big Changes in Processing

  A little-known maker of switching software with very well-known clients is counting on a major upgrade in memory horsepower it is helping to pioneer to drive down transaction-processing costs while dramatically boosting the amount of data networks can handle. San Rafael, Calif.-based Kabira Technologies Inc. may not have the immediate …
• 8 August

  CheckFree Reports Double-Digit Growth Trend in E-Bill Delivery

  The electronic delivery of bills to consumers grew 11% in the second quarter at CheckFree Corp., continuing a trend of double-digit growth in e-bill delivery for the Atlanta, Ga.-based bill-payment processor. The company distributed 41 million e-bills in the quarter, up from 36.8 million in the first quarter and 58% …
• 4 August

  Some Experts Question Gartner’s $2.75 Billion Debit Fraud Estimate

  A major research firm's estimate this week that fraud losses on debit cards in the U.S. hit an estimated $2.75 billion for the 12 months ending in May might have struck a nerve, especially in the absence of hard data on the problem, but it also has experts raising questions …
• 3 August

  How CardTronics Is Leveraging Co-Branding to Make ATMs Pay

  At a time when new ATM deployment has been slow, one independent deployer of the machines has found a big payoff from a novel approach to cobranding ATMs with banks. Since announcing its cobranding deal about 18 months ago, Houston-based Cardtronics Inc. has been able to get more than 800 …