MasterCard's recent decision to slash its interchange pricing for e-commerce merchants that adopt the bank card association's SecureCode authentication program should significantly improve the business case for the technology and put pressure on Visa USA to respond, industry sources say. “I can't imagine [Visa is] going to let MasterCard steal …

In a determined if not defiant speech delivered today at a conference of independent sales organizations, Discover Financial Services Inc. chief executive David Nelms invited ISOs to help Discover build its network by helping introduce new services and recruiting more merchants. He also decried high merchant acceptance costs and took …

MasterCard International and Visa International, which are now both offering platforms in the U.S. for contactless card transactions based on radio-frequency identification technology, have agreed on a common communications protocol and on testing requirements for the technology. The agreement should mean that payment devices branded by one of the associations …

I4 Commerce Inc., which processes the Bill Me Later payment option on e-commerce sites, has adopted an online bill-presentment and -payment technology to allow accountholders to pay for their Web transactions. The service, which allows consumers to pay for online purchases with credit extended by I4Commerce, will use an application …

Dallas-based processor TransFirst today began marketing a Web-based payments-processing engine that was developed by a company it acquired a year ago and is currently being used by 3,500 merchants. Called Transaction Central, the new product acts as a virtual terminal for physical merchants and a payments gateway for Net retailers, …

Although it's a minuscule portion of the total value of retailer-issued gift cards sold in the U.S., the nascent aftermarket for these cards is set for a boom, according to recent research by TowerGroup Inc., Needham, Mass. About 4,500 cards are currently available for auction on a number of recently …

Although their rate of deployment has slowed somewhat, independent sales organizations continue to install ATMs at a rapid rate and now control nearly half of the 394,500 machines in service in the U.S., according to a new study from Tremont Capital Group Inc. Moreover, the Boston-based investment advisory firm's report …

When Visa U.S.A. last month set out a new, stricter transaction-routing policy aimed at making sure all Visa payments flow through VisaNet, its backbone network, the rule's underlying purpose?to curb so-called on-us networking of transactions initiated with Visa cards?made headlines. But another, and less noted, part of the new policy …

Mobile virtual network operators are finding success in re-selling carriers' prepaid wireless service in part through their efforts to penetrate the youth and elderly markets, which are far less saturated than other age groups, according to a leading researcher. Adding to the MVNOs' ability to pick up new subscribers in …

Visa USA's decision to enter the contactless payment market represents a major change in strategy at the card association, which up to now had experimented with radio-frequency-based payment overseas but had not seen the U.S. as ripe for the technology. Now, with its announcement last week that it had created …