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MasterCard Inc.'s announcement on Monday that The Home Depot Inc. would accept the MasterCard PayPass contactless card at 1,974 U.S. locations, along with last week's news that sporting-goods chain The Sports Authority also would take PayPass, indicate that the card network is looking beyond the original base of cash-oriented merchants …
Read More »Interac Connects With Contactless Debit Payments
Canada's Interac Association debit network is teaming with France-based semiconductor manufacturer Inside Contactless in a partnership that will include a test next year that will pair PIN-based debit cards with contactless payments. But to keep transactions moving quickly, cardholders will not need to enter a PIN. The test will be …
Read More »Yankee Group: NFC Transactions Will Soar into the Millions Next Year
Despite tests and innumerable press releases, the number of payment transactions from cell phones barely registers. But payments from mobile devices are about to take off thanks to a convergence of factors on the demand and supply side, according to a new report from Yankee Group Research Inc. The “Dialing …
Read More »Bling Nation’s Community Payment Platform Goes Live in Colorado
Bling Nation Ltd., which late last year unveiled a private-label payment network intended for local transactions (Digital Transactions News, Nov. 19, 2008), this week announced it has signed up its first financial institution and has been processing transactions for it in Colorado. The State Bank, La Junta, went live on …
Read More »Beyond Stickers: Contactless ‘Skins’ for Payments with Handsets
The trend toward using adhesive tags to give mobile phones contactless-payment capability is going one step farther?now at least one startup is marketing a small sheet of vinyl that wraps around the entire mobile device and contains a contactless chip-and-antenna inlay. Mobile Payment Skins LLC launched last week to offer …
Read More »With a New PIN Pad, First Data Promotes Contactless to Merchants
PIN-debit cards and contactless acceptance seem like two unlikely electronic-payment services to promote in one point-of-sale device, but that's exactly what First Data Corp. is doing with the latest addition to its FD line of POS hardware. The big processor's goal with the new FD-30 PIN pad: build future demand …
Read More »Older Operating System Lingers, Holds Back ATM Services, Study Says
Banks aiming to improve customer service should accelerate their move away from old ATMs and the IBM operating system that ran them for years, according to conclusions in a new Aite Group LLC study of banks' ATM channels. While the transition from IBM Corp.'s old OS/2 operating system to Microsoft …
Read More »New Research Shows Optimism About Mobile Banking And Payments
Spurred by the increasing popularity of smart phones and a strong push by financial institutions, the number of Americans actively using mobile-banking services could grow to 53.1 million by 2013, an increase of 431% from an estimated 10 million today. That's the prediction from research firm TowerGroup Inc., which this …
Read More »Instant Issuance Comes to Stickers, Fobs, And NFC Phones
In anticipation of rising demand for contactless form factors other than credit and debit cards, Dynamic Card Solutions LLC this week introduced a product that allows bank branches to personalize key fobs, contactless stickers, and NFC-equipped cell phones on the spot. The product, called Perso-to-Go, complements an existing system the …
Read More »An Expert Casts Doubt on Stickers for Mobile Payments at the POS
With near-field communication (NFC) technology seemingly on hold in North America, mobile-payments backers are turning to radio-frequency identification tags with adhesive backing that can be affixed to phones (Digital Transactions News, Oct. 15, 2008). These so-called stickers, offered by First Data Corp., Oberthur Technologies, and other companies, are widely seen …
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