Transaction Processing

Continuing its conquest of the nation's air carriers, PayPal Inc. reports that it is now accepted on Continental Airlines Inc.'s Web site. Houston-based Continental's acceptance of PayPal leaves the nation's two largest carriers, American and United, as the only big domestic holdouts. Besides newly booked Continental, which claims to be …

It lost in Congress, so now the merchant-acquiring industry is looking to the bureaucracy to help soften the blow of a new federal reporting requirement that becomes effective in 2011. The requirement, part of the massive mortgage-relief bill President Bush signed into law a month ago, will force the card …

The dollar value loaded onto so-called network-branded or open-loop prepaid cards grew nearly 45% last year, or nine times the growth rate of closed-loop cards, according to a new report from Mercator Advisory Group. Mercator's fifth annual study of network-branded cards says the public sector is emerging as one of …

This is the fifth installment of a six-part series exploring the growing economic tensions and structural conflicts between acquirers and issuers in the bank card business. Once upon a time, the idea of non-bank access to the Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide networks for payment innovations was about as far-fetched …

The PCI Security Standards Council on Monday unveiled a preview of its soon-to-be-released Version 1.2 of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, an update the council's boss says adds no major rules. The update also will clarify existing requirements in Version 1.1, eliminate redundancies, and in general try to bring …

Merchant transaction volume increased by a healthy 11% at processor First Data Corp. in the second quarter, but a marked shift by consumers toward debit cards and spending at big discounters lowered margins at the card industry's biggest processor. Debit's growth has been outpacing credit's for years, but in a …

With its U.S. operations holding up despite the economic slowdown, non-bank ATM network operator Cardtronics Inc. is eyeing opportunities as a third-party ATM processor. Cardtronics executives said at a conference call with analysts on Tuesday morning that the conversion of the network's nearly 33,000 ATMs to a new in-house processing …

The softening economy so far hasn't taken a big bite out of payment processors' earnings, but it is having some effects. Meanwhile, processors continue to streamline their operations, integrate acquisitions, and roll out new services. ? Reflecting the recent weakness in consumer spending, big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. …

Banks, merchants, and others that have developed e-commerce channels can't rest easy even though Internet Service Providers and corporations are making progress in plugging a yawning hole in the underpinnings of the Internet that can allow hackers to hijack the customers of virtually any Web site. That's the assessment of …

This is the second installment of a six-part series exploring the growing economic tensions and structural conflicts between acquirers and issuers in the bank card business. All merchants are not created equal in payments. One of the industry's biggest but worst-kept secrets is that in 2003, following the settlement of …