About 14% of financial institutions that issue debit cards charge fees for PIN debit transactions, and in the past year 15% of debit card holders were subject to the fees, with somewhere between 10% and 15% of customers actually paying them. Fewer than 1% of banks, meanwhile, assess fees to …

Purchase volume on MasterCard International credit and signature-based debit cards in the U.S. grew almost 8% in the third quarter, to $132.9 billion, the bank card company reported today. MasterCard credit cards registered growth of 6.9%, to $109.7 billion, well below worldwide growth of 11.2%. On the signature debit side, …

The popularity of gift cards continues to grow, with some 64% of U.S. adults, or a projected 139 million people, now buying or receiving the products annually, up from 59% last year and just 36% three years ago. That's according to the latest annual survey on gift card usage from …

MasterCard International announced today it will launch pilots of its PayPass electronic payment system on mobile phones from Motorola Inc. The Purchase, N.Y.-based card company says the pilots will get under way at a “variety” of unspecified locations in the U.S by the end of the year. The Motorola phones …

With an increasing number of consumers checking credit card statements and paying bills online at credit card issuers' Web sites, Keynote Systems Inc., San Mateo, Calif., announced it will begin measuring the speed and reliability of nine sites as part of a benchmarking index. The company, which specializes in measuring …

Although some issuers and processors have soured on so-called single-use or proxy numbers for secure Internet transactions, Discover Financial Services Inc. has just rolled out an advanced version of its own single-use system and plans very soon to begin a major marketing campaign for it. The most significant feature of …

Arthur Blank & Co. Inc., a Boston-based maker of plastic payment and loyalty cards, is getting into the market for cards equipped with radio-frequency-identification technology, with ambitions particularly for cards supporting loyalty programs and payments in the quick-service retail market. “We as a company are very bullish [on RFID],” says …

Mountain View Calif.-based CyberSource Corp., a transaction gateway for Internet merchants, announced today it is offering a credit-based, non-card payment alternative that can be implemented with a minimum of integration hassles. The company says an arrangement with merchant processor Paymentech L.P. will allow CyberSource merchant clients to install I4Commerce Inc.'s …

Slim CD Inc., a transaction-software company in Coral Springs, Fla., announced today its product has been certified by First Data Corp., allowing banks and independent sales organizations supported by FDC to offer merchants high-speed card transactions on personal computers through Slim CD's software. The company says its product can process …

The first U.S. parking meters equipped to process online authorizations for credit cards have gone live in Seattle. Moorestown, N.J.-based Parkeon Inc. has shipped the first 80 of its so-called pay-and-display parking terminals, which run wireless credit card transactions, for street parking in Seattle. Parkeon's contract calls for it to …