News

March, 2005

• 1 March

  Behind Visa’s About-Face on Contactless Payments in the U.S.

  Visa USA's decision to enter the contactless payment market represents a major change in strategy at the card association, which up to now had experimented with radio-frequency-based payment overseas but had not seen the U.S. as ripe for the technology. Now, with its announcement last week that it had created …

February, 2005

• 28 February

  TransFirst Sets up New Division to Boost Merchant, ISO Business

  Having doubled its merchant base via portfolio acquisitions last year, Dallas-based processor TransFirst has created a product division aimed, it says, at introducing new services to help retain merchants and give independent sales agents more ways to relieve pressure on pricing. The first new products, which will go live in …
• 25 February

  NCR Agrees to Buy Tidel’s ATM Business, Beefs up Self-Service Offerings

  NCR Corp. is acquiring Tidel Technologies Inc.'s ATM business for $10.2 million in a deal expected to close in the fourth quarter. Following a terse announcement released this morning, spokesmen for both companies referred to an 8-K filing Tidel is expected to make later today with the Securities and Exchange …
• 24 February

  Star Gets Set to Slash Interchange for Small-Ticket Sales

  The nation's largest electronic funds transfer network is rejiggering its interchange pricing in an effort to penetrate new merchant categories and convert more low-value transactions?in some cases, below $10?to PIN debit. As part of a sweeping set of pricing changes to go into effect May 1, Star Networks Inc. is …
• 23 February

  Report: 2005 Will Be a Breakthrough Year for RFID Payments

  This will be a year of substantial deployment for contactless payments based on radio-wave technology as card networks roll out programs and merchants find the systems perform as promised, a new research study says. “Merchants are finding it works,” says Erik Michielsen, director for RFID and ubiquitous networks at ABI …
• 22 February

  Reino Turns on Parking Payments with Peppercoin, SunTrust

  Reino Parking Systems Inc. said today it had deployed parking meters in locations around the U.S. that will accept credit card payments from either cards or mobile phones, with transactions processed through SunTrust Merchant Services LLC and Peppercoin Inc. The meters are equipped with card swipes, but users with cards …
• 22 February

  MasterCard Will Kick off New NFL Season with Stadium PayPass Deals

  MasterCard International's PayPass contactless payment technology will be deployed at 900 points of sale for concessions inside two stadiums starting with the 2005 National Football League preseason, the card company announced today. Interest among sports stadiums in PayPass, which replaces conventional card swipes with radio signals that carry card-account data …
• 21 February

  Wireless ATMs May Not Be Just for Mobile Markets Any More

  Some ATM experts are expecting the number of wireless terminals to increase in coming years, and not just for mobile applications like flea markets and fairs. Fixed-location deployments, such as retail stores, may increasingly adopt untethered ATMs because of their TCP/IP connections through readily available public cellular networks and their …
• 18 February

  MobileLime Looks to Pending Major Deals for National Expansion

  Boston-based Vayusa Inc., which markets its m-commerce service under the name MobileLime, has had discussions with a national retailer and restaurant chain about offering its m-commerce network nationally. If successful, the deals could pave the way for MobileLime to reach the 172 million or so mobile users in the U.S. …
• 18 February

  iPayment Reports Transaction Efficiencies Driven by Acquisitions

  Nashville, Tenn.-based iPayment Inc., a publicly held independent sales organization processing for 125,000 small merchants, reported strong results for the fourth quarter of last year and for all of 2004, driven mainly by increased economies of scale from merchant-portfolio acquisitions. Revenue jumped to $101.4 million for the quarter and $364.2 …