News

July, 2013

• 8 July

  How a Brewing Fee Controversy Could Threaten Growth of Prepaid Payroll Cards

  A controversy over paying lower-wage workers with payroll cards could threaten the growth of one of the fastest-expanding prepaid card markets, observers say. A lawsuit filed by a former McDonald’s Corp. restaurant worker in Pennsylvania who was paid via payroll card has attracted attention from federal authorities and triggered an …
• 3 July

  Will That Be Chip And PIN Or Chip And Signature? Expert Forecasts EMV Confusion

  Payments executives already know the coming changeover from magnetic-stripe cards to chip cards using the Europay-Visa-MasterCard (EMV) standard will be expensive—about $11 billion, according to a new report from Aite Group LLC. But Aite notes that while likely to greatly reduce fraud at the point of sale, the big switcheroo …
• 2 July

  Sale of Financial-Service Unit Narrows Intuit’s Payments Focus on Acquiring, Mobile POS

  Intuit Inc.’s sale of its financial-services division, which it announced on Monday, will likely narrow the Mountain View, Calif.-based software giant’s focus in the electronic-payments business, leaving it with an established stake in merchant processing and mobile acceptance. Intuit agreed to sell the financial division to private-equity firm Thoma Bravo …
• 2 July

  PAI Sticks To Its Guns in Serving Firearms Merchants As Square Walks Away

  Sometimes news developments turn certain types of merchants into public-relations and political hot potatoes for their payment processors, forcing merchant acquirers to decide whether they want to continue serving them. Despite strong sales, firearms merchants are one such category today, thanks to several mass shootings in the past two years, …
• 1 July

  Through The Clearing House, Major Banks Prepare a ‘Secure Cloud’ to Mask Payments Data

  Fearing that security worries could hinder mobile payments and other digital-payments channels, a handful of major banks are building a server-based switch that will mask consumers’ banking information when they perform transactions. Tentatively called Secure Cloud, the so-called thin switch is under construction at The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, …

June, 2013

• 30 June

  First-Quarter NACHA Stats Again Reflect Slow Death of Paper Checks

  The slow death of paper checks showed up again in the latest quarterly statistics from NACHA, the regulatory body for the automated clearing house network. The ACH, which links virtually every financial institution in the country, allows banks and merchants to convert checks into electronic formats. But transaction volume on …
• 27 June

  PayPal’s Latest T-Commerce Deal Offers Potential to Reach More Than 80 Million Households

  PayPal Inc. this week struck a deal that offers the San Jose, Calif.-based processor the potential to reach TV viewers in more than 80 million U.S. households. The deal, with San Francisco-based commerce-platform vendor Delivery Agent Inc., furthers PayPal’s recent push into the nascent market for so-called T-Commerce transactions, or …
• 26 June

  CSI’s SPIN, with Payments to Visa Cards, Is the Latest Entry in Faster Transactions

  As more and more financial institutions, processors, and networks climb on the instant-payments bandwagon, Computer Services Inc. has introduced a person-to-person payment service with a twist: It delivers near-real-time payments to recipients’ Visa debit cards. CSI, which calls its new service SPIN, for Social Payments Instant Network, has one client …
• 26 June

  Square Fills an Online Gap with Its New Square Market E-Commerce Service

  Mobile-payments processor Square Inc. on Wednesday moved to fill a gap in its product lineup by introducing Square Market, an e-commerce service for small U.S. merchants. Square Market publishes a merchant’s Web pages at no charge, doesn’t charge for listings, and charges a straight 2.75% of the sale for a …
• 25 June

  ‘Say-On-Pay’ Vote Shows VeriFone Shareholders Want Change They Can Believe in

    In the wake of recent top-level management changes, shareholders of leading point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. last week voted overwhelmingly against the company’s executive-compensation plan. While the ballot was advisory, observers say it is noteworthy because stockholders rarely reject the pay plans corporate boards of directors now present …