News

May, 2015

• 28 May

  Discover To Beef Up Its Anti-Money Laundering Procedures Under Fed Pact

  Discover Financial Services disclosed Thursday that it will enhance its company-wide anti-money laundering procedures under an agreement it signed with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The agreement does not call for fines. The pact follows by 11 months a consent order that Discover’s Delaware-based bank subsidiary, Discover Bank, struck …
• 28 May

  Federal Court Orders Defendants in Newtek Case To Pay $1.7 Million Fine to FTC

  Already found liable for its role in a telemarketing scheme that defrauded consumers, Universal Processing Services of Wisconsin LLC, doing business as Newtek Merchant Solutions, now will have to pay its share of a $1.7 million fine, a U.S. District Court judge ruled last week. The Federal Trade Commission in …
• 27 May

  TSYS And Pax Look To Simplify EMV Compliance Within Merchants’ POS Systems

  Migrating point-of-sale systems to the EMV chip card standard is as much a herculean task as swapping out countertop POS terminals. Now processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) and POS-terminal maker Pax Technology Inc. say they have a product that can make the task easier for POS systems. The product, …
• 27 May

  Superstar Names Add Luster for Xapo And Bitcoin—But Will It Matter in the Long Run?

  By John Stewart Few tactics lend instant credibility like adding heavy-hitter names to a company’s board. On Wednesday, the 5-year-old Bitcoin digital currency, and at least one startup offering Bitcoin wallets, gained a few notches on the credibility index when Xapo GmbH said Dee Hock, John Reed, and Lawrence Summers …
• 27 May

  Mobile Devices for Remote Capture Leave Scanners in the Rear-View Mirror

  The use of smart phones and tablet computers to photograph and deposit checks through online-banking apps surpassed scanner-based remote deposit capture several years ago, but 2014 was a record breaker, according to new findings from research firm Celent, a unit of the Oliver Wyman Group. Some 2,100 banks and credit …
• 26 May

  Payments Competition Will Likely Stunt Postal Service’s Search for New Revenue

  The U.S. Postal Service could generate as much as $1.1 billion in additional annual revenue after five years if it expanded its existing payment services. That’s according to a report from the USPS Office of Inspector General. But a hotly competitive market could dampen those prospects, experts say. Struggling with …
• 26 May

  Payments Executives See Mobile Wallets as Disruptive, but Also as Opportunities

  Carrying out business as usual is becoming harder to do as the payments business tries to adapt to new technologies. Asked at a recent San Francisco conference about what are the most disruptive trends in payments, 40% of industry professionals and alternative-finance executives polled cited the proliferation of mobile-wallet use …
• 22 May

  Bitcoin-Accepting Sellers Point to Multiple Benefits From Early Experience

  In a time when consumers are using multiple ways—smart phones, tablets, stores, and Web sites—to shop, they are also using new ways to pay. Now, some are choosing to shop using Bitcoin, the best-known virtual currency. Some merchants, like Reeds Jewelers, accept Bitcoin primarily because customers want to use the …
• 22 May

  MasterCard Issuers Reject Proposed Settlement for Target Data-Breach Losses

  A proposed $19 million settlement forged by MasterCard Inc. and retailer Target Corp. to compensate MasterCard issuers for fraud and other expenses they incurred after Target’s 2013 data breach failed to win approval from issuers representing 90% of eligible accounts that the so-called alternative-recovery plan needed by a May 20 …
• 21 May

  How Statement Scrutiny and Consumer Choices Could Yield Payment Savings

  Merchants, whether they sell online or in stores, consistently have one bugaboo about their payment-processing service: They want it to be cheaper. Online retailers, in particular, which pay higher card-not-present interchange rates, can use some simple practices to make a dent in these costs, as outlined this week in a …