Transaction Processing

The fraud bug struck debit card issuers last year, and the illness spared neither signature nor PIN-based varieties of debit. Researchers identified a big increase in skimming as part, but only one part, of the cause. According to the 2016 Debit Issuer Study commissioned by Discover Financial Services’ Pulse electronic …

Slowly but surely, the big merchants that make up the stalled Merchant Customer Exchange LLC retailer consortium are finding their own way in mobile payments. The latest example is MCX stalwart CVS Health Corp., which in mid-August announced the launch of its CVS Pay mobile wallet. The Woonsocket, R.I.-based chain …

• Mobile-ticketing platform Atom Tickets announced its app now works with 200 more theaters in 40 new markets across the country, including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Denver, and Sacramento. Partners include AMC Theaters, Regal Cinemas, and Studio Movie Grill. • In related news, mobile-ticketing specialist ExtremeTix Inc. introduced a …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews For drivers passing through the Chicago area, there’s now an app that will handle payment on the 292-mile-long ribbon of toll roads snaking through 12 counties in Northern Illinois. FastToll, from a Las Vegas-based developer called Pragmistic LLC, arrives just ahead of the Labor Day weekend, …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews A vital measure of the U.S. payment card industry’s migration to EMV chip transactions is advancing smartly for mobile point-of-sale provider CardFlight Inc. New York-based CardFlight says 46% of the transactions processed via its gateway in June were made with chip cards using EMV readers. That’s an …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Traffic on the nation’s automated clearing house network has perked up over the last couple of years, and the latest statistics show no slacking off in that trend. Second-quarter transaction volume on the ACH grew 5.6% in the quarter ended June 30, down from the first …

• The ATM Industry Association issued an updated position paper in support of variable surcharges, or so-called “convenience fees,” for ATM transactions; the trade group says global network policies effectively force ATM deployers to assess uniform surcharges despite differences in network interchange rates and fees, and that the coming of …

By John Stewart@DTPaymentNews The big banks that run clearXchange are getting around to slapping a brand name on the peer-to-peer payments network, five years after founding it. The new name is going to be Zelle, confirms a spokesperson for Early Warning Services LLC, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based fraud-management company that real-time …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews In new court filings, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are denying the antitrust allegations that The Home Depot Inc. leveled against them in a June lawsuit. That’s no surprise, but the networks’ responses leave some arcane network fees shrouded in mystery. Visa and MasterCard filed answers to …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Chip-on-chip transaction volume continues to rise as the United States payments industry nears the one-year mark since the Oct. 1, 2015, liability shift, totaling 554.8 million in July, a 26% increase from 440.1 million in May, Visa Inc. announced Tuesday. Since November, Visa’s chip-on-chip transactions have more …