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Business is turning around for VeriFone Systems Inc., the leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, as the economy shows signs of recovery and services rather than traditional hardware for processing payment card transactions account for an ever-greater share of VeriFone’s sales. San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone late Wednesday reported net income of …
Read More »A Bill to Regulate Online Gambling Gets an Airing in Washington
The battle over online gambling continued earlier this week during a hearing held by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee on legislation to tax licensed Internet gambling in the U.S. The bill—known as the Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act—was reintroduced in March by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. …
Read More »Software Platforms Will Rule the Future of Payments, Expert Argues
The future of payments belongs to innovators that use software platforms to develop new services that can be quickly brought to market, according to David S. Evans, an economist and veteran payment-industry observer. Evans, keynote speaker at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s annual payments conference Thursday, cited PayPal Inc., …
Read More »Questions Arise in the Wake of Durbin’s Winning Amendment
Payments-industry partisans of all stripes got onto their soap boxes on Friday and Monday to praise or denounce U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin’s successful amendment that could pave the way for regulation of debit card interchange and acceptance terms. Merchant interests basked in the surprisingly large (64-33) victory they scored late …
Read More »PCI Council Consolidates PIN-Entry Standards into One Set of Rules
The PCI Security Standards Council on Wednesday released updated guidelines governing PIN-entry devices that incorporate all the rules into a single set of requirements. Previously, there were three separate sets of requirements for point-of-sale PIN entry devices (PED), encrypting PIN pads (EPP), and unattended payment terminals (UPT). Version 3.0 of …
Read More »Experts Challenge Payments Execs to Get Ready for Social Media
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 »Even Vendors See a Far-off Horizon for End-to-End Encryption
End-to-end encryption of payment card data is all the rage among vendors to the merchant-acquiring industry, but vendors themselves believe it will take a long time for merchants to begin using their new technology. Asked how long they believe it will take for the majority of U.S. card-accepting merchants to …
Read More »MasterCard Spots Signs of a Turnaround in Cardholder Spending
Despite what MasterCard Inc. executives labeled a “strong quarter” of earnings, U.S. credit card purchase volumes continued to fall in the three months ending March 31. In addition, MasterCard’s debit card count dropped by 1.6% even though debit transaction volumes grew.But signs of both an “underlying momentum of our business …
Read More »MasterCard Aims for Faster Authorizations, More Message Data
While Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are shelling out big bucks for the loyalties of card issuers and merchants (Digital Transactions News, April 29), they’re also adding technological muscle to attract more transaction volume to their networks. In the latest example, MasterCard on Monday announced a host of upgrades to …
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 …
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