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Though the Apple Pay service has drawbacks, Apple’s legendary marketing chops will probably, at long last, let wallets cash in. What hath Apple wrought? At a hugely hyped event Sept. 9 near its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple Inc. unveiled the next iteration of its iconic iPhone—the iPhone 6 and …
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BofA Becomes First Major Issuer to Begin Conversion to Debit Chip Cards
Bank of America Corp. isn’t waiting for 2015 to convert its debit card portfolio to plastic that supports Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip transactions. The Charlotte, N.C.-based banking giant announced Tuesday it will begin issuing debit chip cards to new customers in October, with cards for existing accountholders issued as these …
Read More »Two Payments Companies Target Improving E-commerce and M-commerce Conversion Rates
Frustration with typing in a 16-digit payment card number on a smart-phone screen leads to a lot of lost sales for e-commerce merchants. It’s a problem that two payments companies, offering different products, say they can help with. Making its U.S. debut first is PayItSimple USA Inc., an installment-payment service. …
Read More »Capital Prepaid Looks to Extend Prepaid Program Management to Scores of Small Issuers
The general-purpose prepaid card market is hot, but most smaller financial institutions find it a daunting task to start and run a prepaid program. To fill that gap, Capital Prepaid Services on Monday launched a prepaid Visa card with two small banks as part of a campaign to make prepaid …
Read More »Apple Unveils an ‘Entirely New Payment Process’ with Apple Pay
After weeks of fevered anticipation, it’s finally out. Apple Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a new payments system called Apple Pay along with its iPhone 6 and large-screen iPhone 6 Plus smart phones and a snazzy new smart watch. As predicted, the updated iPhone uses near-field communication (NFC) technology for fast …
Read More »Rumors Cast Apple’s Prospective Role as a Payments Provider as a Done Deal
In case you spent the entire Labor Day long weekend in a fishing boat on a remote lake, you could barely miss the stories moving over the business wires in recent days about Apple Inc. and electronic payments. In sum, the iconic computer maker and iTunes and App Store provider …
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MasterCard Sees Dollars in Tokens As mobile payments and the use of tokens for payment security grow, at least one card network is seeing an opportunity for new fee revenue. MasterCard Inc. is planning new “digital enablement” fees, one for merchant acquirers and others for card issuers. The fees are …
Read More »Cover Story: Is it Still Hip to Be Square?
Is it Still Hip to Be Square? The answer, after five eventful years, is yes. But it needs to find a consumer strategy, and right now there’s no app for that. Nobody in the staid world of the payments business had ever seen anything like it before. Dozens of buttoned-down …
Read More »Security: Unintended But Predictable
Unintended But Predictable The U.S. arrival of EMV virtually ensures criminals will step up attacks on card-not-present channels, which EMV doesn’t protect. So what is the industry doing to defend itself? Just about everywhere that Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards have replaced magnetic-stripe payment cards, greatly strengthening the shield protecting brick-and-mortar …
Read More »Citi Scores a Digital-Wallet First for U.S. Banks, But Will Consumers Care?
Citigroup Inc. claims to have become the first global bank to introduce its own branded wallet in the U.S. The question now is how much Citi’s millions of payment card holders will care as digital-wallet services proliferate. The new Citi Wallet announced Monday is based on MasterCard Inc.’s MasterPass platform, …
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