It lost in Congress, so now the merchant-acquiring industry is looking to the bureaucracy to help soften the blow of a new federal reporting requirement that becomes effective in 2011. The requirement, part of the massive mortgage-relief bill President Bush signed into law a month ago, will force the card …

The dollar value loaded onto so-called network-branded or open-loop prepaid cards grew nearly 45% last year, or nine times the growth rate of closed-loop cards, according to a new report from Mercator Advisory Group. Mercator's fifth annual study of network-branded cards says the public sector is emerging as one of …

Both biller Web sites and bank or so-called consolidator sites are gaining market share, but biller sites are growing faster, according to recent research. Sites maintained by billers will account for 13% of all consumer bill payments this year, up from 11% in 2007. Consolidator sites, meanwhile, will handle 11% …

The federal judge presiding over Discover Financial Services' antitrust case against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. for lost business from would-be financial-institution partners has disposed of pre-trial motions, setting the stage for trial in a network conflict that began a decade ago. At issue is the alleged harm to Discover …

Visa Inc., which on Monday announced a pilot project to deliver transaction alerts to cardholders' mobile phones and e-mail inboxes, expects to launch the service some time next year as a commercial service for its members, Visa executives say. While the pilot, which involves eight banks in the U.S. and …

ATM surcharges often make the news when they hit a sensitive threshold such as $3, but the flip side of the story is the growth of options banks and credit unions offer customers to avoid paying the fees. According to newly released results from the Pulse electronic funds transfer network's …

The movement by card issuers and government entities to replace check-based benefit payments with prepaid cards entered a new category this week with JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s announcement it will issue a Visa card backed by workers' compensation funds. Unlike unemployment compensation, child-support payments, and other benefits that have backed …

Merchant transaction volume increased by a healthy 11% at processor First Data Corp. in the second quarter, but a marked shift by consumers toward debit cards and spending at big discounters lowered margins at the card industry's biggest processor. Debit's growth has been outpacing credit's for years, but in a …

With its U.S. operations holding up despite the economic slowdown, non-bank ATM network operator Cardtronics Inc. is eyeing opportunities as a third-party ATM processor. Cardtronics executives said at a conference call with analysts on Tuesday morning that the conversion of the network's nearly 33,000 ATMs to a new in-house processing …

Banks, merchants, and others that have developed e-commerce channels can't rest easy even though Internet Service Providers and corporations are making progress in plugging a yawning hole in the underpinnings of the Internet that can allow hackers to hijack the customers of virtually any Web site. That's the assessment of …