American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services both report that enlisting bank card acquirers to grow their merchant networks is paying off. Until their initiatives started, merchants had to deal with separate customer-service staff and received separate statements for their respective AmEx or Discover accounts. That made taking brands more …

The Accel/Exchange electronic funds transfer network has signed up a handful of issuers for an Internet-based PIN debit pilot that processed its first transaction, for $9.49, on Wednesday, according to Michael Kelly, general manager of the Morris Plains, N.J.-based network, a unit of Milwaukee-based bank processor Fiserv Inc. Kelly says …

Key operating metrics posted solid gains in recent quarterly reports from two of the payment industry's specialty providers, non-bank ATM network operator Cardtronics Inc. and expedited bill-payment provider TIO Networks Corp. Houston-based Cardtronics, however, still posted a $57.9 million fourth-quarter loss, most of which originated with a one-time charge involving …

Viewpointe Archive Services LLC this week introduced two products that, the company says, respond to rising volumes of imaged checks and could smooth the way for more financial institutions to participate in end-to-end image exchange. One of the products catches mismatches between check images and the data contained in associated …

A new service from specialty payment-services provider Highway Toll Administration LLC seeks to boost electronic toll-booth payments by making toll transponders available to customers who reserve rental cars through the big online travel booking site Travelocity.com. Great Neck, N.Y.-based HTA introduced the mail-order service, called TravelPass, Jan. 29. “The TravelPass …

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Wednesday slashed the pricing it imposes on its prepaid Visa card, cutting the activation fee by nearly two-thirds, the reload fee by 35%, and the monthly maintenance charge by 39%. Since it rolled out its MoneyCard in June 2007, Wal-Mart has sold 2 million of the …

A downward-spiraling economy is accelerating what had already been a rapidly developing trend for startups to introduce online payment methods as alternatives to bank cards. Indeed, one such company, Miami-based Mazooma Inc., launched a cash-based commercial service on Tuesday with the premise that consumers are looking for ways to buy …

The good news about identity fraud: dollar losses per incident are going down. The bad news: incidents are up. The bad news for merchants: fraud victims, especially young adults, will punish merchants they associate with ID fraud. And some bad news for the payments industry in general: more ID fraud …

Further evidence that independent sales organizations are mobilizing to sell Check 21-based electronic check processing to merchants emerged last week with First American Payments L.P.'s announcement that it will re-sell remote deposit services from RDM Corp., a Waterloo, Ontario-based vendor of electronic-check solutions. Fort Worth, Texas-based First American, which provides …

Pricing is by far the biggest reason merchants cite when asked why they left their previous payment card processor, but there's more to the attrition story than meets the eye, according to a new study by Aite Group LLC. “Pricing is only the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back,” …