Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Could a little-noted provision in the Durbin Amendment strangle the nascent U.S. contactless-payments market in its crib? It’s a very real possibility, says a pair of researchers, and the consequences could deal a blow to the prospects for mobile payments that depend on a promising technology called near-field communication (NFC). …
Read More »Search Results for: merchants
EBillme Takes a Dive into the E-Gift Card Pool
ModaSolutions Corp.’s eBillme bills itself as the cash-based way to pay for online purchases, but the company has put a new twist on its services: electronic gift cards. EBillme this week added a dozen new brands to the approximately 50 merchant brands it was already offering online. “We’d like to …
Read More »Why Acquirers May Not Rejoice Over the Interchange Rate Freeze
The freeze in U.S. bank card interchange rates, confirmed Wednesday by Visa Inc. for its network and last week by MasterCard Inc., is obviously good news for merchants and not-so-great news for credit and debit card issuers. But, somewhat surprisingly, it may not be all that welcome by merchant acquirers …
Read More »With Its New Pricing Schedule, MasterCard Stands Pat on Debit Interchange
MasterCard Inc.’s new interchange schedule is out, and it contains no changes in consumer debit card rates or the transaction volume thresholds that many rates require. Normally, no change means no news, but in the highly charged world of interchange, anything the payment card networks do or don’t do is …
Read More »With Payfone, AmEx Bolsters Its Mobile-Payments Initiative
Displaying its newfound mobile-payments fervor for the second time in just over a fortnight, American Express Co. on Wednesday announced it was investing in a startup called Payfone Inc. and would integrate Payfone’s technology with its new Serve mobile-pay platform. Founded in 2008, New York City-based Payfone uses a consumer’s …
Read More »Secure Vault Payments Will Go Mobile Later This Year with Bar Codes, Exec Says
Secure Vault Payments will announce a mobile application next month for the U.S. market, a top executive with the online-payments service tells Digital Transactions News. The mobile application, which will work on Apple, Android, and BlackBerry smart-phone systems, will start with a pilot in the fall and be in commercial …
Read More »Demographics, Transit Helped Drive Salt Lake Selection, Isis Says
Local demographics and the availability of a mass-transit system that uses contactless technology for fare payment chiefly accounted for the decision by Isis, the joint venture formed late last year and led by major wireless carriers, to launch its first pilot next year in Salt Lake City, Utah, Isis’s head …
Read More »Common in Acquiring, Sharing of Bad-Merchant Data Comes to the ACH
Taking a cue from bank card merchant acquirers, bank processor Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) and NACHA on Monday announced the formation of the Terminated Originator Database, a new service to help banks identify businesses that other banks have cut off from originating automated clearing house transactions because of …
Read More »Ingenico To Buy Hypercom Assets, Installs New North American Boss
Ingenico S.A. will buy part of point-of-sale terminal maker Hypercom Corp.’s U.S. assets as VeriFone Systems Inc. prepares to complete its acquisition of Hypercom under a deal the companies announced Monday. France-based Ingenico also installed the head of its Australian unit, Thierry Denis, as its new North American president. …
Read More »The Fed’s Same-Day ACH Service Gets off to a Slow Start
More than eight months after it introduced same-day settlement for automated clearing house transactions, the Federal Reserve has attracted only a handful of banks for the service. “It’s been a long struggle,” Steven Cordray, retail payments project manager at the Atlanta Fed’s Retail Payments Office tells Digital Transactions News. Speaking …
Read More »