In buying Chockstone Inc., a provider of gift card and loyalty services and technology for merchants, Heartland Payment Systems Inc. essentially is making a bet that merchants with loyal customers make more loyal clients for merchant acquirers. “That certainly is part of the thought process,” Heartland president and chief financial …
Read More »Search Results for: real-time payments
MasterCard Sees New Service As a Big Step Toward Commercial NFC
MasterCard Inc. on Thursday announced a service it sees as a major step toward the ultimate commericialization of contactless payments via mobile phones. Intended primarily for the North American and European markets, the MasterCard Over-the-Air Provisioning Service is aimed at allowing any member issuer to readily personalize a handset for …
Read More »Online PIN Debit Pilot Could Lead to Commercial Service by Mid ’09
The Accel/Exchange electronic funds transfer network said on Thursday it will launch a pilot in which it will switch PIN debit transactions originating at e-commerce stores. The pilot, which the Morris Plains, N.J.-based network will run with Acculynk Inc., a provider of PIN debit technology tailored for use online, will …
Read More »Citi’s Mobile P-to-P Service Could See Commercial Launch in ’09
A person-to-person payment pilot based on mobile phones, launched on Tuesday by Citigroup Inc. and Obopay Inc., will become a commercial service in the U.S. next year if goals concerning user counts and transaction volumes are met, says a Citi executive. The pilot, which follows a trial the two companies …
Read More »Users Proliferate, But Banks Face a Cost Squeeze in Online Bill Pay
More people than ever are paying bills electronically, but banks have few ways of making money from that trend, according to separate research reports out this week. The latest consumer survey from bill-pay technology provider CheckFree, a unit of bank processor Fiserv Inc., estimates that 63.1 million Internet-using households pay …
Read More »Gasoline Marketers Underwhelmed by New Visa Interchange Rates
With complaints from fuel marketers reaching a crescendo, Visa Inc. introduced on Thursday a sweeping new credit and debit card interchange rate structure for gasoline that leaves sellers better off for many consumer credit card transactions over $30. In conjunction with the new rates, the card network also announced it …
Read More »How Customer Research Can Sort Out Alternative Payment Choices
Online sellers trying to sort out the plethora of alternative-payments choices?and make decisions regarding which, if any, to accept?should begin by asking questions about what business problems they are trying to solve, a retail executive said at an e-commerce trade show on Wednesday. “Once you understand what problem you're trying …
Read More »A Fast Start for Online Resources’ Expedited Bill-Pay Offering
Internet banking and bill-payment services provider Online Resources Corp. this week unveiled its expedited bill-pay service for financial institutions and walk-up providers to offer to consumers and small-business users, ratcheting up rivalries in the fast-growing realm of last-minute payments. While the expedited bill-pay market has some bigger competitors, including Fiserv …
Read More »A Renewed Effort at ACH-Based Driver’s Licenses Maps Its Plans
A veteran of previous efforts to turn driver's licenses into payment cards is working with the operator of an online consumer-loyalty network on a plan intended to introduce automated clearing house transactions tied to shoppers' driver's licenses at brick-and-mortar stores by 2009. Linda Bryant, who has formed a processor called …
Read More »Why POS Merchants Don’t Buy in to Payment Security
Data Insecurity Part 4 Securing transactions at the point of sale seems like child's play compared to the Internet, and since the payments volume is 20 to 25 times the size of online transacting, a natural venue for improved data security. But the rash of data breaches (covered in Part …
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