Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Both biller Web sites and bank or so-called consolidator sites are gaining market share, but biller sites are growing faster, according to recent research. Sites maintained by billers will account for 13% of all consumer bill payments this year, up from 11% in 2007. Consolidator sites, meanwhile, will handle 11% …
August, 2008
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26 August
Both Sides Claim Victory After Judge Rules in Discover’s Antitrust Case
The federal judge presiding over Discover Financial Services' antitrust case against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. for lost business from would-be financial-institution partners has disposed of pre-trial motions, setting the stage for trial in a network conflict that began a decade ago. At issue is the alleged harm to Discover …
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25 August
NACHA’s Online Payment System Starts to Catch on on Campus
NACHA's Secure Vault Payment (SVP) system, which was built to authenticate and process online payments for merchants and billers, may be finding some acceptance among an unlikely constituency: universities and colleges. The University of Georgia will likely begin accepting tuition fees through SVP after the first of the year, followed …
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20 August
AT&T Aims to Ring up Savings with e-Bills Via CheckFree Banks
Hoping to cut its paper-bill costs, AT&T Inc. has quietly made electronic bill payment available to its AT&T Mobility mobile-device customers that have deposit accounts with the more than 3,000 financial institutions that use the e-bill services of bank processor Fiserv Inc.'s CheckFree subsidiary. AT&T Mobility, formerly Cingular Wireless, and …
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20 August
Online PIN Debit Gets a Boost with the Latest UATP Payments Deal
Universal Air Travel Plan's alternative-payments initiative added a fifth processor this week with the announcement that Acculynk Inc. will process PIN debit transactions online for airlines that choose to enable the option through UATP's switch. The news not only further's UATP's 3-year-old effort to add alternatives to credit cards for …
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19 August
Commercial in ’09. Visa Alerts Will Include Two-Way Messaging
Visa Inc., which on Monday announced a pilot project to deliver transaction alerts to cardholders' mobile phones and e-mail inboxes, expects to launch the service some time next year as a commercial service for its members, Visa executives say. While the pilot, which involves eight banks in the U.S. and …
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19 August
The Coming PCI Update: Mostly Tweaks, but WEP Gets Whacked
The PCI Security Standards Council on Monday unveiled a preview of its soon-to-be-released Version 1.2 of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, an update the council's boss says adds no major rules. The update also will clarify existing requirements in Version 1.1, eliminate redundancies, and in general try to bring …
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19 August
If You’re a Small Bank, the Trend Is Your Friend in Electronic Payments
This is the fourth installment of a six-part series exploring the growing economic tensions and structural conflicts between acquirers and issuers in the bank card business. If you're a top-10 bank card issuer these days, the good times are looking increasingly tenuous; if you are one of the nation's 17,000 …
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18 August
Debit Study: No-Surcharge, Rewards Get Hot, Contactless Cools off
ATM surcharges often make the news when they hit a sensitive threshold such as $3, but the flip side of the story is the growth of options banks and credit unions offer customers to avoid paying the fees. According to newly released results from the Pulse electronic funds transfer network's …
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14 August
JPMorgan Offers Insurers a Prepaid Visa Card for Workers’ Comp
The movement by card issuers and government entities to replace check-based benefit payments with prepaid cards entered a new category this week with JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s announcement it will issue a Visa card backed by workers' compensation funds. Unlike unemployment compensation, child-support payments, and other benefits that have backed …