News

January, 2010

• 12 January

  Star Ushers in New Rates, with Interchange Spiffs for Some Issuers

  Star, one of the nation's largest electronic funds transfer networks, on March 1 will implement changes in its interchange pricing for point-of-sale transactions that in some cases will include dramatic increases and an elimination of fee maximums. The network is also introducing on April 1 a new fee category that …
• 11 January

  Best Buy Cuts off Visa Contactless with Little Risk to Sales

  The struggling U.S. contactless card market took another blow late last year when leading consumer-electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. stopped accepting the Visa payWave contactless card, reportedly because it objected to paying Visa Inc.'s signature-debit interchange rates. Best Buy's action probably cost the retailer nothing in lost sales but …
• 8 January

  Heartland Settles with Visa, Agrees to Pay Nearly $60 Million for Losses

  Merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. cleared away probably the single biggest remaining matter from the huge data breach it disclosed a year ago by announcing a $60 million settlement with Visa Inc. on Friday. The settlement will cover losses Visa credit and debit card issuers incurred in the wake …
• 7 January

  Eye on Processing: Glitches Strike in U.S., Germany, And Australia

  Payment card processing glitches struck in the U.S., Germany, and Australia over the past week. Although full details about them still aren't known, the foreign ones apparently involved applications that couldn't properly handle the change in year on Jan. 1?problems eerily reminiscent of those predicted in the late 1990s during …
• 7 January

  Could All-Digital Checks Be the Next App for Your Smart Phone?

  With an eye on the image-exchange networks banks have built since Check 21 took effect more than five years ago, analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the head of the rules-setting organization for image exchange are proposing a new form of payment that would allow consumers and …
• 6 January

  LML Scores First ACH Patent Settlement, Says More Could Follow

  LML Payment Systems Inc., which is pressing two patent-infringement lawsuits that could have broad implications for banks and processors that handle e-checks on the automated clearing house network, says more settlements could follow the one it reached last week with RBS Citizens Bank N.A. Patrick H. Gaines, LML's chief executive, …
• 5 January

  Consumers Favor Debit Cards, But Prepaid Cards Lag Far Behind

  While electronic payment methods continue to gain ground against paper-based payments, consumers show widely varying attitudes toward specific types of electronic methods, according to a recently released report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The paper, which the Boston Fed published last month and is based on a representative …
• 5 January

  Discover Continues Its Zip Trial But Stays Mum About Any Rollout

  A Discover Financial Services employee test of contactless payment stickers for mobile devices that started in April 2009 will continue, according to a Discover executive. But Discover is being coy about if and when it or its card-issuing partners will roll out Discover's Zip contactless brand on a wide scale. …

December, 2009

• 29 December

  Results Show a More Robust Holiday Shopping Season Than Expected

  With the 2009 holiday shopping season all but over except for some post-Christmas bargain hunting, several payments indicators show that merchant acquirers are processing more transactions than many observers expected when the season began nearly two months ago. Online shopping tracked by Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC, the nation's largest e-commerce …
• 29 December

  Seeing Opportunity, Moneta Will Add Credit Offers to Its Online Wallet

  Alternative-payments processor Moneta Inc. announced this week it will start offering so-called transactional credit to its users at the end of the first quarter. The credit feature, which the Atlanta-based company is adding to an online wallet that currently relies on automated clearing house debits from users' checking accounts, could …