News

July, 2010

• 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 …
• 8 July

  Consumers See Little Benefit in Interchange Regs, Research Shows

  Speculation has flowed freely about the effects of the controversial “Durbin amendment” on merchants, card issuers, and the payment card networks should the interchange-regulation measure become law. But data about how consumers would be affected are scarce. Javelin Strategy and Research, however, says research it conducted late last year, in …
• 8 July

  High-Profile Players Sign on to Promote Mobile-Merchant Technology

  As the young market for mobile payments on smart phones takes shape, industry players are scrambling to pair up with world-famous partners with massive numbers of consumer and business customers. Point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc., for example, is selling hardware for its PAYware Mobile application in Apple Inc.’s retail …
• 8 July

  A Banker’s Nightmare: Social Networks Beget a Slew of PayPals

  Non-bank threats to banking franchises like electronic payments are nothing new, but if a researcher is correct, banks and the card networks they built could soon find themselves under assault from a whole new batch of players that have found a niche in social networks and online gaming. “I don’t …
• 6 July

  PayPal, Google Use Mobile to Penetrate the Physical Point of Sale

  Evidence mounted over the past week of the interest at least some major e-commerce processors have in using mobile platforms to penetrate the physical point of sale. First came word that Bling Nation Ltd., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based mobile-payments processor that depends on contactless stickers, is working on an integration …