Transaction Processing

U.S. bank card purchase volumes rose in the 10% range in the quarter ending Sept. 30, with MasterCard Inc. growing faster than Visa Inc. in debit and Visa gaining faster than MasterCard in credit. MasterCard on Thursday reported total U.S. credit, charge, and debit card purchase volume of $267 billion, …

The impact of tablets and smart phones on payments is largely unfelt in bill payment with only $36 billion of the $2.1 trillion in annual bill payments made by these mobile devices, finds a new report from consultancy Javelin Strategy & Research. That equates to about 5% of U.S. consumers. …

Crowdfunding organizations that work with payment service provider WePay Inc., and have integrated WePay’s application programming interface into their Web sites, are creating $1.5 million in daily payments for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company. That is three times more than two years ago, WePay says. n WePay, founded in 2008, …

  USConnect, a food-service network, has ordered 50,000 ePort vending-machine payment devices from USA Technologies Inc., making it the largest single order ever, says Malvern, Pa.-based USA Technologies. EPort devices enable vending machines to accept credit and debit cards and contactless payments. USConnect will supply the devices to its network …

Leading payment card processor First Data Corp. on Tuesday announced it had bought Perka Inc., a startup that provides smart-phone-based loyalty programs for merchants. The Perka buy comes just a few weeks after First Data unveiled a tablet-based point-of-sale system from Clover Network Inc., another startup that it quietly bought …

(An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry) n On October 16, 2013, I delivered a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) on my views of the evolution of the payments industry.  At the beginning of this address, I told the audience that …

In his Oct. 23, 2013, letter to the payments industry (“An Open Letter to the Electronic Payments Industry from Bob Carr”), the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems provides a compelling historical overview of the challenges faced by our industry some three decades ago. As detailed in his letter, …

Will the world end for ATM owners on April 8? Not likely, but it could become less secure. That is the day Microsoft Corp. ends all support—including security updates—for Windows XP, a common operating system not only for PCs but also for ATMs. That has the ATM industry pondering a …

Prepaid and gift card provider Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. is further broadening its reach beyond supermarket gift card malls with its deal to offer gift card services within PayPal Inc.’s digital wallet and its pending acquisition of InteliSpend Prepaid Solutions, which offers corporate incentives and consumer promotion products. Announced Wednesday, …

In its latest gambit to commercialize instant payment settlement, Dwolla Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a service that will let users pay online merchants using credit rather than their own money. The service, which the Des Moines, Iowa-based alternative-payment processor is calling simply “Credit,” is intended to accelerate progress toward faster …