Pricing

NACHA-The Electronic Payments Association on Wednesday unveiled pricing for a pilot program it will launch early next year to test automated clearing house payments made by consumers to online merchants and billers, with payments authorized by online-banking programs. For e-commerce merchants, the fees, which will include a straight 1.35% levy …

Processor First Data Corp.'s Star electronic funds transfer network on Tuesday announced a deal with the Bethesda, Md.-based Allpoint ATM network that Star expects will fill in some geographic gaps in its nearly nationwide ATM coverage. Under the arrangement, financial-institution users of Star's Starsf service will be able to offer …

Acquirers will be penalized one interchange tier for large merchants that qualify for volume-based tiered rates and fail to show compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) by Sept. 30, Visa USA says. In a document it released earlier this month to its members, Visa clarified an interchange …

Volume for Internet payment processor PayPal Inc. climbed 21% in the second quarter, to 172.9 million transactions, and the San Jose, Calif.-based company continues to make steady inroads with e-commerce merchants away from eBay Inc.'s online auctions, according to statistics filed last week by eBay, PayPal's parent company. Off-eBay volume …

The Capitol Hill spotlight shone again on payment card acceptance costs Thursday when a U.S. House of Representatives antitrust panel held a hearing to investigate interchange. At issue is the question whether the federal government should play any role regarding this most controversial aspect of card pricing. Bank interests are …

Now that the two top executives have been appointed to run Visa Inc., the massive entity that will emerge from a sweeping restructuring of the worldwide Visa organization, payments observers see more capability in place to deal with issues to come. But the departure of Visa USA head John Philip …

Electronic bill payment is a key function Visa USA is expecting holders of the new Wal-Mart MoneyCard prepaid plastic will use the product for. According to Visa, nearly 20% of purchase transactions on its existing reloadable prepaid products are bill payments. The MoneyCard, which is issued by GE Money Bank …

PropertyBridge Inc., which handles electronic rent payments on behalf of property managers, plans to launch next month a recurring PIN-less debit option. It is processing some PIN-less transactions now in a test, or so-called “beta,” mode, for an unnamed property-management firm, says Jason Gardner, president of the Oakland, Calif.-based company, …

MasterCard Worldwide received a double dose of good debit news last week. First came the news that big credit card issuer Capital One Financial Corp. is rolling out a MasterCard-branded rewards debit card that doesn't require the cardholder to have a deposit relationship with Cap One (Digital Transactions News, June …

In the largest agreement so far for deployment of vending machines accepting mag-stripe and contactless cards, USA Technologies Inc. has been awarded a three-year contract that includes supplying card readers for up to 7,500 machines operated by Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., the world's biggest Coke distributor, in cities across the country. …