Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
A startup called Openbucks this week introduced a service that lets consumers use merchants’ gift cards to buy goods online from other merchants. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which has been working for five months with gift cards issued by the Subway sandwich-shop chain, claims its “gift card payment …
Read More »Retailers Should Brace for More Fraud After a Lull in Losses, Study Says
The good news: merchants’ total losses from fraudulent transactions are down. The bad news: losses are likely to rise. More bad news: fraudsters are taking a liking to alternative and mobile payments. Those are some of the key findings from the third annual “LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud” study …
Read More »Buoyed by Gift Cards, Closed-Loop Prepaid Grew Faster Than Expected in 2010
Closed-loop prepaid cards held their own in 2010, growing by 13% in loads to $261.2 billion from $230.3 billion in 2009, according to Mercator Advisory Group Inc.’s newly released industry study. In fact, the closed-loop market, which while bigger in loads but slower growing than the newer, general-purpose or …
Read More »Two Founders Bolt CoCard to Start a New ISO with Shareholder Equity And Deal Focus
Two executives who helped found CoCard Marketing Group LLC have left the Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization to start their own ISO with what appears to be a unique ownership structure based on shareholding for participating offices. “Our company is going to be based on shares of stock,” says …
Read More »Online Banking Catches a Tidal Wave of Consumer Popularity
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Read More »Visa Hikes Prepaid Interchange But Chops Some Debit Rates
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Read More »U.S. Treasury Electronic-Benefit Campaign Gears up As Checks Dwindle
Nearly nine months after introducing a rule requiring recipients of Social Security and certain other benefits to switch from checks to electronic deposit, the U.S. Treasury Department says the number of check recipients has dipped below 9 million for the first time in decades. The agency is now in …
Read More »In a Good Omen for Mobile Payments, Location-Based Services Attract Handset Users
n A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Washington, D.C., has found that about 20% of U.S. adults uses a smart phone to access a location-based service or a so-called geo-social site, or a social network in which the user “checks in” with his or …
Read More »Report Predicts How the U.S. Terminal Base Will Migrate to EMV and Mobile Payments
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Read More »VeriFone Looks to Services And Mobile Payments for Growth
North American sales were flat, but leading U.S. point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. still posted a 21% increase in revenues on the strength of its international business in the quarter ended July 31, and profits jumped 42%. Fresh from its August acquisition of long-time rival Hypercom Corp., VeriFone anticipates …
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