News

October, 2013

• 8 October

  A More Inclusive American Express Paints Its Serve Prepaid Card Program Blue

  Taking a cue from its Bluebird prepaid card for customers of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., American Express Co. today relaunched its Serve prepaid card with new features, more reload locations, and new retailer partners along with no reload fees at 14,000 7-Eleven and CVS/pharmacy locations, and a $1 monthly fee that …
• 4 October

  TNS Partners with AJB Software To Bring Outsourced Payment Services to Large Retailers

    Large merchants that work with AJB Software Design Inc. to handle their payments-technology integration have a new option to use for outsourcing their payment needs. They can use TNSPayDirect, a new service from Transaction Network Services Inc., which provides access to an AJB retail transaction switch. AJB’s retail transaction …
• 3 October

  M-Payments Startup CardFree Scores First Merchant with Sonic Drive-In

    CardFree, a mobile-wallet startup founded by payments-industry veterans with experience in mobile-payments apps, says its first merchant partner is Sonic Drive-In, a quick-serve restaurant chain with more than 3,500 locations. CardFree features a geo-location app to identify the consumer’s proximity to the merchant for marketing purposes. The company, which …
• 3 October

  Subway Rollout Deal Launches Paydiant into Front Ranks of Mobile-Payments Players

  The deployment, which is expected to start later this year, is being characterized by both companies as a national rollout rather than a pilot. Paydiant’s Chris Gardner, a co-founder of the Wellesley, Mass.-based company, refers deployment questions to Subway, which refuses to comment beyond the companies’ joint press release. The …
• 2 October

  Card Network Executives Take Care To Narrowly Define Proposed Token Standard

  By John Stewart As dramatic as their joint tokenization announcement was on Tuesday, key officials with Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and American Express Co. cautioned on Wednesday against far-reaching industry speculation about how the announcement might affect or relate to other standards, including near-field communication (NFC) and the Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) …
• 2 October

  Analysts See Smooth Transition at Global Payments As Garcia Gives Way to Sloan

  By Kevin Woodward The appointment on Tuesday of Jeffrey S. Sloan as the new chief executive of payment processor Global Payments Inc., succeeding long-time chief executive Paul Garcia, surprised hardly anyone. Sloan, who joined Global Payments as president in 2010, has a history with the company. Garcia, who was named …
• 1 October

  Dueling Studies Reach Opposite Conclusions About Consumers’ Durbin Savings

  Durbin Amendment critics have long accused merchants of pocketing the billions they’ve saved since the amendment’s highly controversial debit card interchange price controls took effect two years ago Tuesday. Now, however, retailers are rolling out a study estimating that merchants passed on $5.86 billion in Durbin-related savings to consumers last …
• 1 October

  Mobile Purchases Claim a Rapidly Rising Share of E-Commerce Traffic, Gateway Study Shows

  By Kevin Woodward Smart phones and tablets continue to garner a larger share of payments as consumers increasingly use the mobile devices for more than talking and sending text messages, finds a survey from Amsterdam-based global gateway provider Adyen Inc. In the Adyen Global Mobile Payments Index, covering May through August, …

September, 2013

• 30 September

  Survey Finds ATM and Most Other Checking Fees Growing Only Modestly in 2013

  The average ATM surcharge rose 4% over the last year, but the average foreign fee fell 2.5%, according to new data from research firm Bankrate Inc. Findings from Bankrate’s latest annual survey of checking-account fees, including ATM and overdraft charges, shows overall price increases have slowed, a possible indication that …
• 30 September

  Having Stopped Branch Sales, Chase Exits the Open-Loop Gift Card Business Entirely

  JPMorgan Chase & Co., which this spring stopped selling Visa gift cards through its network of branches, has now quit the business entirely. The decision comes weeks ahead of the biggest selling season of the year for gift cards but doesn’t surprise some observers, who point to the challenges recent …