Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Banks, merchants, and others scratching their heads over the exploding popularity of social networking and its close cousin, social gaming, can harness the online phenomenon for payments but will likely have to jettison decades of settled thinking, experts say. Banks, in particular, will have to wrestle with knotty problems surrounding …
Read More »The Senate Attaches Interchange Regs to Financial-Reform Bill
The battle over interchange regulation continues to heat up, with the introduction this week of amendments to financial regulatory reform legislation pending in the U.S. Senate that would target the controversial fees charged to merchants. The three amendments, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and co-sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy, …
Read More »Both Credit & Debit Rise for Visa, Along with Acquirer Fees
Visa Inc.'s U.S. debit card purchase volumes again put on a strong performance in the quarter ending March 31 and the battered credit card sector continued a revival first seen in late 2009. Merchant acquirers, however, are paying more to process Visa transactions, and they can expect another price increase …
Read More »Congress Breaks Its Silence on Interchange with a New Hearing
After months of inactivity on interchange regulation, the U.S. House of Representatives judiciary committee on Wednesday held a hearing on one bill advocated by national merchant groups. And while the committee took no action, one merchant group views the hearing as a hopeful sign that legislation will be passed. The …
Read More »NACHA Taps The Clearing House to Help Commercialize EBIDS
Capping a process that began last fall, NACHA announced a partner on Monday to help commercialize a system it has been piloting that lets consumers receive and pay bills electronically through the automated clearing house network. The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, a New York City-based company whose Electronic Payments …
Read More »Canada Will Enforce Its Payments Code with Regs, If Necessary
After five months of discussion, the Canadian government is out with the final draft of its Code of Conduct for the payments industry. The merchant-friendly code is supposedly voluntary, but proposed legislation could force it upon payments companies that don't adopt it on their own by May 17. “Payment card …
Read More »New MasterCard ATM Rates Will Crimp Income for Banks And ISOs
Independent sales organizations and financial institutions that deploy ATMs have suspected for weeks that MasterCard Inc. planned to cut the interchange income allowed on withdrawal transactions on its Cirrus network, but now the total cost of the move is becoming clear. The hit to U.S. ISOs alone could amount to …
Read More »ISOs Lukewarm About Sponsor Banks, Other Vendors, Survey Finds
More than a fifth of independent sales organizations claim to be ready to change their sponsor merchant-acquiring bank, according to a new Aite Group LLC report about ISOs' relationships with their vendors. A smaller but still substantial number also are likely to change some of their other vendors. From July …
Read More »A Dutch Gateway Touts Pricing, Overseas Reach in U.S. Launch
Pressure from the down economy is pushing more online merchants to seek out ways of selling to overseas customers, creating an opportunity for startups like Adyen Inc., a Netherlands-based online payments gateway that announced this week it has started operations in the U.S. Gateways funnel payments for online merchants to …
Read More »In Bypassing iPhone for iPad, Square Shows Its Hand?Or Some of It
The mysterious Square Inc. payment service made a name for itself Monday by joining a somewhat exclusive club of companies to offer the first applications for Apple Inc.'s iPad notepad computer within a couple of days of the iPad's much-hyped April 3 debut. Square also revealed its pricing. San Francisco-based …
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