Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
A dramatic downdraft in overall mobile-phone ownership has robbed mobile banking of its forward thrust, but the rapid rise of smart phones is compensating for much of that loss, a new research report says. Indeed, smart phone ownership will exceed that of so-called feature phones as soon as next year, …
September, 2010
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23 September
With Springbok, Fifth Third Gets into Open-Loop Prepaid
Merchant acquirer Fifth Third Processing Solutions LLC is also a sizable closed-loop gift card processor, and now it’s about to get into the processing of open-loop prepaid cards through its acquisition of bankrupt Springbok Services Inc.’s technology platform. The acquisition follows closely on the heels of Fifth Third Processing’s announcement …
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23 September
Report Faults Merchants for Sub-Par Virtual Gift Cards
With the holiday shopping season only weeks away, the nation’s biggest retailers are falling short in their offerings of virtual gift cards, according to research released on Thursday. Of the country’s 100 biggest online merchants—many of which also operate large brick-and-mortar chains—only half offer virtual cards, which are gift “cards” …
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22 September
Bling Nation’s PayPal Tie-In Gets a Boost from VeriFone
Bling Nation Ltd.’s decision to use VeriFone Systems Inc. terminals, announced this week, includes an agreement to harness VeriFone’s transaction gateway as well as its reseller network in a move that could bring PayPal Inc. acceptance to thousands of brick-and-mortar merchants. Bling has been testing PayPal acceptance since the end …
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22 September
New Visa Ventures Tap the Growing Transit Payments Market
Visa Inc. raised its profile in the growing transit payments market on Tuesday with announcements that it was backing mobile payments for New York City-area commuters and was the exclusive card network for new prepaid fare cards in Los Angeles. Visa also said its payWave contactless card became usable Aug. …
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21 September
CardinalCommerce Announces an Entry in Online PIN Debit
CardinalCommerce Corp., a major player in the business of enabling alternative payments for merchants and processors, entered the nascent business of online PIN debit on Tuesday with a product it says requires little to no integration work by merchants, gateways, processors, or networks. The Mentor, Ohio-based company says it has …
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20 September
Effort to Sign up Acquirers Nearly Complete, Discover Says
Reflecting trends seen by its larger network competitors, Discover Financial Services on Monday reported modest growth in credit card volumes and bigger growth in debit. Discover, in releasing earnings for its third fiscal 2010 quarter ended Aug. 31, also said that its 4-year-old effort to recruit merchant acquirers to sign …
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16 September
Secure Vault Payments Launches As a Commercial Service
NACHA’s long-awaited Secure Vault Payments (SVP) program, which lets consumers make guaranteed payments online through the automated clearing house network, officially became a commercially available product on Thursday after a pilot that began in the spring of 2008. The new product can now be offered by any bank linked to …
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16 September
MasterCard Will Recruit Multiple Issuers for Delta Debit Card
In an apparent first in the debit card market, MasterCard Inc. has a struck a deal with Delta Air Lines Inc. to build a national network of issuers of Delta SkyMiles cobranded debit cards bearing the MasterCard logo. Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc. currently is the sole issuer of Delta debit …
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15 September
Chase’s Outage: Fact of Life in E-Payments World
After being out all day Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s online-banking service sputtered back to life early Wednesday. Service, however, was spotty at times, though by mid-afternoon it seemed to be working normally again. But with 16.6 million active online-banking customers potentially affected, the outage was big enough to warrant …