News

November, 2007

• 29 November

  Under Its New CEO, IPP Maps Big Plans for Walk-in, Online Bill Pay

  A sleepy, middle-tier processor of walk-in bill payments and prepaid card top-ups is embarking on ambitious plans to introduce online bill payment, forge more direct links to billers, and build out its network of retail walk-in locations. Under Ronald W. Averett, its new chief executive, Fairfield, N.J.-based IPP of America …
• 29 November

  18 Months on, Discover Says Its Acquirer Program Is on Target

  Nearly a year and a half after first enlisting bank-card merchant acquirers to sign small and mid-size merchants for Discover acceptance, Discover Financial Services LLC says the program is doing just what the company intended. “We’ve seen excellent results,” Matt Johanson, vice president of acquirer relations at Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover, …
• 28 November

  NACHA Tightens Risk Management, Restricts Payment Aggregation

  NACHA, the rules-setting body for the automated clearing house network, this week announced membership approval of a rule amendment that will raise fines for unauthorized transactions and cut off ACH access for companies that enter too many such payments into the network. NACHA has also issued a rules clarification that …
• 27 November

  Cyber Monday Traffic Soars, But Sites Labor Under the Strain

  Online shoppers hit virtual stores on Monday in greater numbers than they ever have before on the Monday after Thanksgiving, but a number of leading e-commerce sites struggled to keep up with all the traffic, according to reports released on Tuesday. On so-called Cyber Monday, consumers performed 1.9 million transactions …
• 27 November

  Heartland Sues Micros, Chase Paymentech over Restaurant Transactions

  A courtroom food fight of sorts has broken out between big merchant processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and a leading hospitality-industry technology provider supported by a network gateway owned by No. 1 merchant acquirer Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC. Princeton, N.J.-based Heartland today said it has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit …
• 26 November

  Profit Squeeze, Interchange, and PCI Top Acquirers’ Gripe List

  Results from an Aite Group LLC survey of merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations released on Monday show that processors consider “margin compression,” high interchange, and dealing with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard as the top three challenges facing the acquiring industry. The results, part of a report called …
• 21 November

  An EFT Summit Helps Costco Weigh Options for Web-Based PIN Debit

  In a development that could lend considerable momentum to efforts to bring PIN debit to the Internet, Costco Wholesale Corp. is investigating at least three technologies that would allow the retailing giant to accept PIN debit cards for payment on its Web site, according to sources familiar with the matter. …
• 21 November

  Contactless Vending Gains 4,000 More Machines with Latest Pact

  USA Technologies Inc., a Malvern, Pa.-based vendor of card-reading devices for vending machines, this week announced another pact with MasterCard Inc. that will put USA Technologies' e-Port G6 magnetic-stripe and contactless payment card readers in 4,000-plus more vending machines. The deal represents the fourth between the two companies in the …
• 20 November

  Did Buyer’s Remorse at Cap One Sink the $700 Million NetSpend Deal?

  Though Capital One Financial Corp. and prepaid card manager NetSpend Holdings Inc. late on Monday said they had “mutually agreed” to call off Cap One’s planned $700 million cash acquisition of NetSpend, the move may have been a consequence of the deal’s hefty price tag, says an analyst who follows …
• 19 November

  E-Commerce Sales Continue to Rack up Double-Digit Gains

  Retailers and analysts have been giving forecasts ranging from ho-hum to downright pessimistic for the upcoming holiday spending period, but the outlook for online retailers almost certainly is better. Growth rates in electronic-commerce remain near 20%, the U.S. Commerce Dept.'s Census Bureau reported on Monday. The Census Bureau's quarterly report …