News

July, 2010

• 21 July

  As the Ink Dries on Dodd-Frank, Merchants Gird for Interchange Battle

  As President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010 into law on Wednesday, at least one major merchant interest group has already fired the opening shot in what promises to be an all-out battle over the fees banks earn on debit card transactions. At the center of …
• 20 July

  A Social Media Paradox: Sites Are Popular, But Users Aren’t Happy

  While social media sites are wildly popular with consumers, it turns out those same users give the sites low scores for satisfaction, ranking the category above only airlines and cable and satellite TV providers, according to a report released on Tuesday. Still, that dissatisfaction is unlikely to affect payments processors …
• 19 July

  Soon To Be Law, Pricing Regs Hit BofA, Spare Green Dot, NetSpend

  The so-called Durbin Amendment that soon will be law could cut Bank of America Corp.’s debit card revenues by up to nearly 80%, the nation’s largest debit card issuer estimates. Two major prepaid card processors that are planning IPOs and rely on growing interchange income, however, seem likely to escape …
• 15 July

  A ‘Bill Me Later’ for Bill Pay Launches with a $4.5 Million Warchest

  BillFloat Inc. launched its service this week with a hefty vote of confidence from initial investors that include PayPal Inc. and a business proposition that grants spot credit to hard-up consumers so they can delay paying their bills. Like Bill Me Later, which grants so-called transactional credit for online purchases, …
• 15 July

  A Social Media, P2P, And Micropayments Mashup Emerges from First Data

  It’s social payments, person-to-person payments, and micropayments all in one. And it’s sweet too. That’s the essence of a new electronic-gift service dubbed “eGift Social” that payment processor First Data Corp. launched recently with ice cream purveyor Cold Stone Creamery as its first client. Cold Stone, a unit of Scottsdale, …
• 14 July

  Pulse Makes Web-Based PIN Debit a Commercial Service

  The concept of allowing consumers to use debit cards with PINs to make purchases on the Web took a big step forward on Wednesday with the Pulse electronic funds transfer network’s announcement that it is rolling out an online PIN-debit service. With some 4,400 member financial institutions, Houston-based Pulse, which …
• 14 July

  NRF And Visa, Often at Odds, Come Together on Storage Rules

  Not always the best of friends, the National Retail Federation and Visa Inc. saw fit on Wednesday to jointly announce that Visa had clarified its card-number storage rules to affirm that merchants may present a truncated or disguised number on a transaction receipt for dispute resolution in place of a …
• 13 July

  Government Benefits Will Help Drive Open-Loop Prepaid Growth

  Driven by growth in government programs, corporate payroll cards, and health care, the network-branded prepaid card sector can expect its U.S. load volume to nearly quadruple from an estimated $120.2 billion last year to more than $440 billion in 2017, according to research commissioned by MasterCard Inc. The study, by …
• 13 July

  Same Day ACH Will Be a Boon for Web And Mobile–But How Soon?

  Now that same-day clearing is coming to the automated clearing house network, payments players are starting to parse the impact the faster settlement time will have on emerging payment methods that rely at least in part on the ACH. While many payments executives are enthusiastic about the change, some experts …
• 9 July

  Online Game, Social Network Sites Confront Unique Fraud Challenges

  Most of the public attention on online fraud centers on traditional merchants seeking to identify fraudulent orders, detect and prevent data breaches, and the like. But fraud also is a major concern for the online-game publishers and social networks that operate exclusively in the virtual world. Because of the unique …