News

February, 2010

• 24 February

  Prepaid Card Mall Pioneer Blackhawk Moves into Online, B2B

  Less than a decade after launching its first gift card mall, the Blackhawk Network Inc. is looking for new frontiers of prepaid card growth in the online world and the business-to-business market. “I think we've learned a few things on how to serve the customer better,” Teri Llach, chief marketing …
• 23 February

  NACHA Looks for a Partner to Help Move EBIDS out of Pilot Mode

  An electronic bill-payment and ?presentment network put together by NACHA, the governing body of the automated clearing house, is seeking an organization that can help build out the system and give it marketing firepower. Rob Unger, senior director of e-billing and payments at Herndon, Va.-based NACHA, says the association issued …
• 23 February

  Opportunity Comes With Risk for Public-Sector Prepaid Cards

  Government represents one of the biggest opportunities out there for prepaid card issuers and processors, but the market is fraught with pricing, operational, and other hurdles, according to executives who work with the public sector. About $65 billion currently is loaded onto prepaid card programs for federal and state benefits …
• 23 February

  U.S. Issuers Begin to Fret About Mag-Stripe Problems Overseas

  U.S. card issuers are starting to worry about problems some of their high-spending and corporate card customers are having using their magnetic-stripe cards in countries that support the chip-and-PIN standard, according to executives who spoke on Tuesday at a smart card conference. Whereas the issue hardly seemed apparent only a …
• 18 February

  A Rebound for Credit Cards Online Will Slow Gains for Alternatives

  Various payment alternatives will continue to grow in volume and claim more share of Web-based sales, but the dramatic gains of recent years will moderate as credit cards stage a partial comeback, according to a forecast released this week. Alternative payment methods, which have proliferated in variety over the past …
• 18 February

  PayPal’s Facebook Deal Could Open Big Transaction Potential

  With the announcement on Thursday that PayPal Inc. will process payments for Facebook, the massive social network has found a major-brand payments partner and PayPal has established a tie to what could become an enormous online marketplace with equally big transaction potential. The two companies said PayPal will process payments …
• 18 February

  Heartland Restructures Its Sales Force to Jumpstart Productivity

  While hoping that it's seeing the light at the end of its long data-breach tunnel, Heartland Payment Systems Inc. also is restructuring its sales force in an effort to boost flagging productivity. The Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer fired 98 low-performing relationship managers in November, but is in the process of …
• 17 February

  Consumers Show Surprising Affinity for Mobile Remote Capture

  While many bankers and even technologists may regard handset-based electronic deposits as esoteric, consumers seem not only familiar with the product but favorably inclined toward it, according to a survey by Mercatus LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that follows mobile banking and payments. The survey, conducted in December among more …
• 17 February

  Underbanked Remain Closely Wedded to Cash, Study Shows

  Underbanked and unbanked consumers who use check-cashing stores rely heavily on traditional payment forms such as checks, cash, and money orders for bill payments and few use electronic payment methods, according to new survey data from Aite Group LLC. While that may not be a surprise, Aite's study shows the …
• 15 February

  TSYS Aims to Tap Growing Debit Trend with Its New Hybrid Card

  Here's one way credit card issuers could win back some popularity in an increasingly debit card world: make credit cards function like debit cards. That's the essence of a new product from processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS), which last week unveiled its TSYS Hybrid card. The patent-pending product enables …