Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
After taking a time out in June to resolve problems ranging from a parts shortage to merchant underwriting, the new payment service Square Inc. is about to commercially distribute its cube-shaped card readers for smart phones. Chief executive officer Jack Dorsey, co-founder of the Twitter social network, told attendees at …
Read More »As the Ink Dries on Dodd-Frank, Merchants Gird for Interchange Battle
As President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010 into law on Wednesday, at least one major merchant interest group has already fired the opening shot in what promises to be an all-out battle over the fees banks earn on debit card transactions. At the center of …
Read More »NRF And Visa, Often at Odds, Come Together on Storage Rules
Not always the best of friends, the National Retail Federation and Visa Inc. saw fit on Wednesday to jointly announce that Visa had clarified its card-number storage rules to affirm that merchants may present a truncated or disguised number on a transaction receipt for dispute resolution in place of a …
Read More »High-Profile Players Sign on to Promote Mobile-Merchant Technology
As the young market for mobile payments on smart phones takes shape, industry players are scrambling to pair up with world-famous partners with massive numbers of consumer and business customers. Point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc., for example, is selling hardware for its PAYware Mobile application in Apple Inc.’s retail …
Read More »Risky Software Still in Place as a Visa Deadline Passes
Although many U.S. merchants and processors have met Visa Inc.’s July 1 deadline for replacing unapproved point-of-sale software applications with ones that meet requirements of the Payment Application data-security standard, or PA-DSS, many non-compliant card-processing applications remain in the marketplace, Visa says. While Visa would not release numbers on compliance, …
Read More »The Acquiring Industry Stays on Its Top-Heavy Course
The rich in merchant-acquiring market share got richer last year, but nearly everyone got a little poorer when same-store sales are the measure, according to the latest annual study of the acquiring industry by Mercator Advisory Group Inc. The top five acquirers processed 74% of U.S. general-purpose payment card charge …
Read More »PayPal Prepares for a Rich Mobile-Commerce Harvest
Already claiming to be the leader in mobile payments, PayPal Inc. on Thursday announced it had optimized its Express Checkout service for mobile devices. The new mobile service caps a busy week for PayPal that included the disclosure that alternative-payment provider Bling Nation Ltd. is developing a PayPal application. PayPal …
Read More »E3 Terminals Take Root in Heartland’s Merchant Portfolio
Merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has installed its new end-to-end encryption terminals at more than 1,020 merchants since commercially launching the technology on May 24, the company reports. Heartland also will be rolling out a small USB card reader, or “wedge,” later this month, says Steve Elefant, chief information …
Read More »Pending Legislation Would Extend CARD Act Deadline for Prepaid
Issuers of prepaid and gift cards could get an extension of the Aug. 22 deadline for complying with new rules from the Federal Reserve under legislation pending in the U.S. Senate. The so-called ECO-Gift Card bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, D-NY, passed the U.S. House of Representatives on …
Read More »ISOs’ Volume Shortfalls Trigger First Data Demands for Fees
In a move that could have a bottom-line impact for an untold number of independent sales organizations, First Data Corp. is sending letters to client ISOs notifying them they owe fees to the Atlanta-based processing giant to compensate for shortfalls in processing volumes. While it’s not clear how many such …
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