News

February, 2005

• 17 February

  ATM Exchange Sees Worldwide Market for New Triple DES Upgrade

  The ATM Exchange, a supplier of ATM parts and service, will begin selling next month a retrofit product for older ATMs that upgrades them to run on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. The product, called 3DES Plus XP, also renders ATMs compliant with so-called triple-DES encryption requirements laid down by …
• 16 February

  PNC Uses Windows to Deliver Ads And Coupons to C-Store ATMs

  The advent of ATMs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system is making it easier for banks, retailers, and other machine deployers to add revenue-generating features to the machines, including advertising. PNC Corp., a Pittsburgh-based bank, has found success in introducing advertising and couponing capability as it swaps out older ATMs …
• 14 February

  ATMIA Sets up New Group to Tackle Prepaid, Other Debit Card Issues

  Card issuers' uncertainties surrounding such issues as prepaid debit, debit card fraud, and the future flow of interchange income have led a major ATM industry trade group to form a new organization to represent issuers' interests. The Debit Council of the ATM Industry Association held its first meeting today at …
• 14 February

  Survey: Add-on Fees Mean No Relief in Acquirer Pricing in 2004

  Add-on pricing as well as an increase in manual items kept the fees banks and independent sales organizations pay to processors from dropping in 2004, according to a new acquirer-pricing study released today. Although most observers thought processor fees might decline somewhat last year as a result of the emergence …
• 11 February

  Mobile-Gaming Boom May Force Changes in Mobile Payments

  The booming market for mobile games is set to overtake that for ring tones as the largest digital-content market in m-commerce, with carrier-based billing remaining the dominant payment model for the foreseeable future. According to the most conservative projection offered by experts speaking this week at a conference on the …
• 10 February

  Pulse Says Discover Signature Debit Pricing Will Be ‘Competitive’

  Any signature-based debit card product that banks in the Pulse electronic funds transfer network may issue with Discover Financial Services Inc. will most likely offer interchange income equal to what they earn on Visa and MasterCard signature debit, the top executive at Pulse says. “Any [signature-debit] fees will have to …
• 9 February

  Visa Reports 18% Volume Boost for ’04 with Drop in Chargebacks

  Visa USA reported yesterday its total dollar volume in 2004 reached $1.3 trillion, up 17.9% from the previous year. Total sales volume, or dollars on Visa products at the point of sale, hit $1.045 trillion, an increase of 19.1%, the San Francisco-based bank card network says. All Visa-branded cards in …
• 9 February

  How Resellers Are Driving the Market for Prepaid Wireless Service

  Prepaid wireless service is surging in the U.S in large part because of the efforts of so-called mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), which re-sell airtime from the major wireless networks, experts said at an industry conference yesterday. Indeed, the prepaid wireless market in the U.S., counting both airtime and carriers' …
• 7 February

  Remittance Cards Will Top 1 Million in 2006, New Report Says

  The number of Visa- and MasterCard-branded money-transfer cards issued in the U.S. will reach 1.1 million in 2006, up from 400,000 this year and just 145,000 in 2004, according to a new research study on the remittance market. The jump in the number of the prepaid cards follows the increasing …
• 4 February

  QSR and Debit Gains Among Highlights for MasterCard in ’04

  MasterCard International reports its U.S. dollar volume on transactions on all of its products except online debit cards grew 11.5% in the fourth quarter last year, to $188.5 billion, while U.S. volume for 2004 as a whole expanded by 9.3%, to $695.9 billion. Total MasterCard purchase and cash transactions in …