Pricing

Meeting the Aug. 22 deadline for complying with new rules for prepaid and gift cards released on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve will be a logistical nightmare for card companies and retailers that have to replace hundreds of millions of cards before the 2010 holiday shopping season, according to a …

Competition in the bill-to-carrier mobile payments market is heating up with Verizon Wireless's announcement it will offer the service directly to consumers through Danal Inc.'s BilltoMobile payment service within the next few weeks. The deal marks Seoul, Korea-based mobile payments operator Danal's first contract in the U.S. Danal is in …

Interchange regulation of the kind being advocated by national merchant groups just isn't getting much traction on Capitol Hill. In the latest example, the National Retail Federation on Monday issued a statement saying it was disappointed that U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd's much-awaited proposal for regulatory reform in …

Bank of America Corp.'s decision to stop offering overdraft protection on debit card transactions casts a spotlight on billions of dollars in fee revenue issuers earn from cardholders that could drain away if the bank's move becomes a trend. It could also be a harbinger of a move by consumers …

The continuing boom in general-purpose prepaid cards will lift all providers' boats, but some industry players will see revenues grow faster than others, according to new report from Aite Group LLC. The Boston-based research firm estimates that the total revenue pie of the so-called network-branded prepaid card industry will grow …

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty submitted his budget plan to Parliament late last week, and his proposals have merchants celebrating. That's because the government is floating the idea of regulating the payment card networks and, by implication, credit and debit card interchange. “There was good news for retailers in yesterday's …

Government represents one of the biggest opportunities out there for prepaid card issuers and processors, but the market is fraught with pricing, operational, and other hurdles, according to executives who work with the public sector. About $65 billion currently is loaded onto prepaid card programs for federal and state benefits …

The explosive growth of social networks and online games in the U.S., which in the past year or so has drawn the attention of a number of micropayments startups, has now attracted a foreign processor with deep pockets and the ability to offer a wide array of payment options. France's …

Americans now spend more than half a trillion dollars a year on PIN-debit cards, but the merchant-acquiring industry is still adjusting to consumers' embrace of point-of-sale debit. At the same time, debit card pricing is shifting from a simple, flat-fee model to a more complex one, which is raising the …

If consumer confusion is holding back mobile payments, a startup called XipWire Inc. figures it has an answer. The five-person Philadelphia company earlier this month launched a text-based service that lets handset users pay merchants as well as other individuals. But while other more established payments companies have already started …