Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co.'s decision to roll out a biometric payment system to all 85 stores in its chain was driven by both transaction-cost savings and customer interest, a senior executive for the Charleston, S.C.-based grocer says. In related news, Pay By Touch, the San Francisco-based company whose system Piggly …

It has been an eventful week for American Express Co. Today the company announced that Woonsocket, R.I.-based drugstore chain CVS Corp. has agreed to serve as the first national merchant to accept ExpressPay, an AmEx system that relies on radio waves rather than card swipes to authorize transactions. This news …

Visa USA announced it is now offering chargeback rights to consumers holding its Interlink PIN debit card. The bank card network sees the extension of chargeback protection to PIN debit as a response to consumer expectation and a competitive edge for Interlink issuers. “As debit usage continues to grow, consumers …

Visa's decision to increase its interchange rates for PIN debit transactions on its Interlink network may generate more revenue for the network's issuers but will also create more interest in competing non-bank networks catering to merchants, according to some observers. Visa yesterday released a four-page document to member banks outlining …

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 …

The National Automated Clearing House Association, Herndon, Va., is preparing to launch a test early next spring of a new electronic transaction type for payments on the Internet. The new payment category would be best suited for payments to so-called spontaneous retailing sites?those operated by hard goods merchants, rather than …

Card transactions based on radio-frequency technology got a major boost today with the rollout of MasterCard International's PayPass system to some 715 McDonald's Corp. restaurants in New York, Dallas, and Orlando, Fla. The stores will go live with PayPass later this year, MasterCard says, and an undisclosed number of further …

Defenders of interchange for electronic credit and debit transactions argue merchants are losing sight of the value interchange pays for. The subject of interchange has become hotly contested in the wake of lawsuits by retailers challenging it or aspects of it, and following recent interchange hikes by the bank card …

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co., a Charleston, S.C.-based supermarket chain, today switched on an in-lane biometric payment system in four stores on the way to a planned rollout of the fingerprint authentication system to all 116 stores in the chain. The system, from San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, allows customers to …

The rapid growth of the market for stored-value cards issued to employees in lieu of paychecks has prompted a wide array of consumer and labor groups to petition the Federal Reserve Board to extend to payroll cards the consumer protections of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act. In a letter sent …