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Contrary to some perceptions, there is no wall separating the customer bases of banks and check-cashing stores. Many consumers patronize both financial entities. And, according to a new report from Aite Group LLC, banks could win more business from consumers who heavily patronize check-cashing stores by adding walk-in bill-payment services …
Read More »Congress Will Study Interchange And Eyes Rules for Gift Cards
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a sweeping credit card reform bill that leaves out retailer-backed regulation of interchange. The bill, which the Senate sent to the House Tuesday, includes a Congressional interchange study and could open the door to controls on gift cards. The House earlier …
Read More »Travelex Gives a Lift to MasterCard’s Year-Old Debit Platform
MasterCard Inc. is getting a big boost from The Travelex Group, a multinational distributor of travel-related prepaid cards. Under a deal announced last week, Travelex will convert its payment card network brand to MasterCard and process card transactions on MasterCard's year-old debit processing platform called Integrated Processing Solutions, or IPS. …
Read More »Recession Is Boosting Some Prepaid Cards, But Profits Are Lagging
Prepaid cards branded by one of the national payment card networks are benefting most from the recession, but prepaid profitability overall is suffering, according to a survey of prepaid card executives whose results were released in a report this week. The survey, conducted by payments-research firm Aite Group LLC at …
Read More »Reload Competition Heats up with Visa’s MoneyGram Deal
Visa Inc. will quintuple the size of its Visa ReadyLink prepaid card reload network when the big money-transfer firm MoneyGram International Inc. enables its 40,000 U.S. locations to add funds to prepaid cards under a deal Visa announced Tuesday. The MoneyGram locations will make Visa's reload network nearly as big …
Read More »Retailers Form Association To Defend Closed-Loop Gift Cards
The Retail Gift Card Association is recruiting new members with the aim of building a positive image of closed-loop gift cards, getting members to follow an ethics code, and countering the bad publicity directed at gift cards in recent months by consumer groups and legislators monitoring marooned cards whose sponsor …
Read More »Discover’s Prepaid Teen Card Is the Latest Entry in a So-So Market
Discover Financial Services this week unveiled a teen-oriented prepaid card called Current by Discover. Current is the latest entrant in a niche that includes the Visa Buxx and Allow MasterCard, prepaid cards that may have garnered more headlines than users. But Discover says its new card has straightforward pricing and …
Read More »Wal-Mart Slashes Fees on Prepaid MoneyCard As Economy Slumps
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Wednesday slashed the pricing it imposes on its prepaid Visa card, cutting the activation fee by nearly two-thirds, the reload fee by 35%, and the monthly maintenance charge by 39%. Since it rolled out its MoneyCard in June 2007, Wal-Mart has sold 2 million of the …
Read More »How Checking Fees Create An Opening for Prepaid Cards
Banks claim they want to serve so-called underbanked and unbanked consumers, but the fees they slap onto checking accounts, particularly non-sufficient funds (NSF) and overdraft fees, are creating a strong business case for prepaid cards to displace a substantial number of checking accounts, according to a new research report. Using …
Read More »RBS WorldPay Rocked by ATM Fraud As New CEO Takes the Helm
A new chief executive has taken over at merchant processor RBS WorldPay Inc. just as news erupted this week of a major worldwide ATM fraud that relied on card data stolen from the processor's system last year. Ian Stuttard took the helm of the Atlanta-based company, a unit of Royal …
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