Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
A startup called Openbucks this week introduced a service that lets consumers use merchants’ gift cards to buy goods online from other merchants. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which has been working for five months with gift cards issued by the Subway sandwich-shop chain, claims its “gift card payment …
Read More »Buoyed by Gift Cards, Closed-Loop Prepaid Grew Faster Than Expected in 2010
Closed-loop prepaid cards held their own in 2010, growing by 13% in loads to $261.2 billion from $230.3 billion in 2009, according to Mercator Advisory Group Inc.’s newly released industry study. In fact, the closed-loop market, which while bigger in loads but slower growing than the newer, general-purpose or …
Read More »U.S. Treasury Electronic-Benefit Campaign Gears up As Checks Dwindle
Nearly nine months after introducing a rule requiring recipients of Social Security and certain other benefits to switch from checks to electronic deposit, the U.S. Treasury Department says the number of check recipients has dipped below 9 million for the first time in decades. The agency is now in …
Read More »Volatile Markets Hammer Payments Stocks, But Prepaid Players Most of All
The wild trading on stock markets worldwide over the past week has left U.S. payments-industry shares battered and bruised, though they made a mild recovery Thursday morning. Worst hit are shares of prepaid card companies, though networks, processors, and money-transfer providers are feeling the pain too. A Digital Transactions …
Read More »New Rule To Fight Prepaid Money Laundering Mostly Exempts Closed-Loop Cards
Federal regulators on Tuesday issued their final rule for preventing terrorists, drug dealers, and other criminals from using prepaid cards for money laundering. The new rule from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) subjects merchants and other non-bank entities that sell or manage prepaid cards to some …
Read More »In a Surprising Twist, Reloadable Prepaid Not As Durbin-Proof As Originally Thought
Reloadable general-purpose prepaid cards, once thought to be largely exempt from the debit card interchange restrictions of the Durbin Amendment, will be covered by that law in more cases now that the Federal Reserve has issued its final rule interpreting the amendment. Some experts see the new rule crimping …
Read More »Looking Ahead: Fed’s Rule Will Complicate Debit Game for All Players
n It also raises as many questions as it answers. n He refrained from speculating on what changes might be made, but the panel agreed the Fed’s room for maneuver is constrained by Congress. The Fed’s rule implements the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act, passed by Congress last …
Read More »AmEx Launches a Reloadable Prepaid Card with Practically No Fees
With issuers and program managers having come under fire in recent months for allegedly high and numerous consumer fees for prepaid products, American Express Co. on Tuesday launched a reloadable prepaid card that levies no activation or maintenance fees. It also charges no reload fee when value is loaded …
Read More »Visa Announces Deal with Monitise for Mobile Service Tied to Debit, Prepaid
Visa Inc. on Thursday cemented into place two more pieces of a developing strategy for what is rapidly turning into a hotly competitive market for mobile payments. The world’s largest card network announced it had struck an agreement with Monitise PLC, a U.K.-based provider of mobile services for financial …
Read More »EBillme Takes a Dive into the E-Gift Card Pool
ModaSolutions Corp.’s eBillme bills itself as the cash-based way to pay for online purchases, but the company has put a new twist on its services: electronic gift cards. EBillme this week added a dozen new brands to the approximately 50 merchant brands it was already offering online. “We’d like to …
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