Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
In a move that could bring millions of new users to a popular prepaid card program, the U.S. Department of the Treasury on Tuesday issued a final rule mandating that Social Security and other government benefits be paid to beneficiaries electronically. Under the new rule, beneficiaries will receive direct deposits …
Read More »Debit Cards Boom While Checks Slump, Fed Study Shows
While the electronic-payments industry waits for the Federal Reserve to come up with new debit card regulations, the Fed on Wednesday released results from its massive, triennial study of U.S. payments. The numbers show a dramatic rise in debit card transactions, coupled with an equally steep decline in check usage. …
Read More »Retailers See Gift Cards Boom As They Stress Reloadability
Closed-loop prepaid cards are growing more slowly than their newer, open-loop cousins, but recent numbers from big payment card processor First Data Corp. show the closed-loop sector still has plenty of life. First Data’s monthly SpendTrend report for October shows reload dollar volumes on closed-loop cards increased 25.2% from October …
Read More »Home Depot Launches a First—Videos for Virtual Gift Cards
A new electronic gift card launched by The Home Depot Inc. that lets customers upload and send video images—apparently the first such card in the market—is performing reasonably well in the early going for the huge home-improvement chain. “It’s a little bit early, but it has met expectations so far,” …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: First Data, Green Dot, Heartland, Cardtronics
Payments companies ranging from leading merchant processors to prepaid card and ATM managers reported transaction growth in the third quarter, but some also faced pricing pressures and other drags on the bottom line. –No. 1 payment processor First Data Corp. said transactions in its merchant-processing unit called Retail and Alliance …
Read More »Starbucks Extends Mobile Payments to Nearly 300 More Stores
In the biggest expansion yet of mobile payments to its standalone stores, Starbucks Coffee Co. on Monday said it has equipped almost 300 company-owned stores in New York City and parts of Long Island to accept transactions using 2-D bar code technology. This expansion follows the Seattle-based coffee chain’s move …
Read More »NetSpend Pulls Off a Successful IPO Despite MetaBank’s Problems
The storm clouds over prepaid card program manager NetSpend Holdings Inc.’s IPO caused by regulatory problems at MetaBank, the prepaid card program manager’s main issuing partner, cleared Monday, enabling NetSpend to go through with the stock offering at the mid-point of its projected price range. And on Tuesday afternoon, NetSpend’s …
Read More »Crackdown on MetaBank Casts a Shadow on NetSpend’s IPO
Federal banking regulators this month cracked down on MetaBank, a major prepaid card issuer, an action that threw into question the pending initial public offering of prepaid card program manager NetSpend Corp. Austin, Texas-based NetSpend is scheduled to price its long-planned IPO on Thursday, according to reports on the financial …
Read More »Report Faults Merchants for Sub-Par Virtual Gift Cards
With the holiday shopping season only weeks away, the nation’s biggest retailers are falling short in their offerings of virtual gift cards, according to research released on Thursday. Of the country’s 100 biggest online merchants—many of which also operate large brick-and-mortar chains—only half offer virtual cards, which are gift “cards” …
Read More »With Springbok, Fifth Third Gets into Open-Loop Prepaid
Merchant acquirer Fifth Third Processing Solutions LLC is also a sizable closed-loop gift card processor, and now it’s about to get into the processing of open-loop prepaid cards through its acquisition of bankrupt Springbok Services Inc.’s technology platform. The acquisition follows closely on the heels of Fifth Third Processing’s announcement …
Read More »