News

November, 2006

• 13 November

  MODASolutions Joins the Incentive Parade for Online Payments

  First came PayPal Inc., then Google Inc.'s Checkout service. Now MODASolutions, an Ottawa-based company that lets consumers pay e-retailers as if they were paying any other online bill, is offering incentives tied to the holiday-shopping season to promote alternative ways to pay online. But in MODASolutions' case, its SECURE-eBill service …
• 10 November

  Visa Admonishes Merchants To Segment Electronic Traffic

  In the latest of its so-called Data Security Alerts aimed at strengthening merchant payment card security, Visa USA is putting the spotlight on point-of-sale systems that provide electronic on-ramps for fraudsters. In particular, Visa wants merchants to remedy the vulnerabilities of what it calls “improperly segmented network environments.” Merchants can …
• 10 November

  Metavante Pairs Electronic Bill Pay With Prepaid Cards

  Processor Metavante Corp. has come up with a seemingly natural but rare pairing of two booming payment niches: payroll cards and electronic bill payments. A major provider of both services to financial institutions, Milwaukee-based Metavante this week introduced what it calls Metavante Prepaid Bill Payment. The service makes Internet-based bill …
• 9 November

  Pricing, Retailing Rivalry Likely Led to Sam’s Club’s MasterCard Deal

  Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s decision to accept MasterCard Worldwide credit cards?but not credit cards from Visa USA–at its 500-plus Sam's Club stores stems from competitive forces in the warehouse retailing business, but may also signal the beginning of the end of uniformity of merchant acceptance of the two bank card brands. …
• 8 November

  All-Electronic Check Clearing Keeps Rising As Image Exchange Grows

  Checks cleared as electronic images continue to account for an increasing share of all image-based check traffic, even as an industry group works to hammer out a new system to accelerate the conversion to all-electronic check processing. Indeed, The Image Payments Network, an image-exchange network operated by The Clearing House …
• 7 November

  M-Commerce Execs Further Dim Prospects for Premium SMS

  In another indication that the days may be numbered for premium short-message service (SMS) as the dominant mobile-commerce payment channel, some 65% of executives in the entertainment, media, mobile, and broadband industries surveyed at a recent conference agreed that payments handled as direct charges by operators' billing systems will be …
• 6 November

  PayPal to Launch Promotion for Express Checkout Merchants

  PayPal Inc. will pour as much as $100 million into a new promotional campaign aimed at driving traffic to merchant sites that accept PayPal. The campaign, which kicks off Nov. 23 and includes cash-rebate offers between $10 and $20 as well as free shipping when consumers use PayPal, is entirely …
• 3 November

  A Processor Puts a Different Spin on Back-Office Conversion

  Check processor Solutran Inc. thinks it has found a way to make the new back-office conversion (BOC) e-check code more attractive to merchants: take the costly scanning process out the back office and outsource it. Plymouth, Minn.-based Solutran recently announced its SPIN service, for Solutran POS and Imaging Network. The …
• 2 November

  MasterCard Starts Test in Dallas of NFC Payment With OTA Downloads

  MasterCard Worldwide announced on Thursday the start of a contactless-payment pilot in Dallas using mobile phones enabled by near-field communication (NFC) technology. The pilot, which is expected to involve about 500 subscribers of 7-Eleven Inc.'s Speak Out Wireless service, is the second real-world test of NFC payment in the U.S. …
• 1 November

  Debit Traffic Soars at MasterCard While Ticket Sizes Drop

  Reporting results for its first full quarter as a publicly held company, MasterCard Inc. on Wednesday released statistics showing significant gains for its U.S. debit card brand. Signature-debit cards accounted for 1.39 billion point-of-sale transactions in the third quarter, a 62% jump over volume in the year-ago period. The product …