Competitive Strategies

Mobile payment is making headway among the nation’s top 100 financial institutions, according to a new study from First Annapolis Consulting Inc. The mobile offerings today, however, center on person-to-person payments, wire transfers, and remittances rather than the use of mobile devices as payment instruments at the point of sale. …

A new electronic gift card launched by The Home Depot Inc. that lets customers upload and send video images—apparently the first such card in the market—is performing reasonably well in the early going for the huge home-improvement chain. “It’s a little bit early, but it has met expectations so far,” …

A trade group of ATM independent sales organizations says its study of the major EFT networks’ surcharging rules favor banks at the expense of non-bank ATM owners. The Atlanta-based National Association of ATM ISOs and Operators, which represents ISOs that own or operate 70,000 ATMs, says it is negotiating with …

With competition heating up in the market for person-to-person payments, Fiserv Inc. reports its 3-month-old ZashPay service is making headway with client financial institutions. The service now claims some 400,000 registered users, while more than 400 banks and credit unions have signed on to offer it, with 100 of those …

In the biggest expansion yet of mobile payments to its standalone stores, Starbucks Coffee Co. on Monday said it has equipped almost 300 company-owned stores in New York City and parts of Long Island to accept transactions using 2-D bar code technology. This expansion follows the Seattle-based coffee chain’s move …

With its developer conference just ahead and new markets such as mobile payments opening up, PayPal Inc. put the oomph in its parent company eBay Inc.’s third-quarter financial report. But with more than 90 active million customers and $22 billion in quarterly payments volume, a question on some minds is …

Mobile banking, and by extension mobile payments, have rapidly crossed the line from add-on to necessary products for financial institutions, speakers and other sources at a banking-technology expo said on Wednesday. The primary reason mobile has assumed such importance has more to do with fear of attrition than with revenue …

The storm clouds over prepaid card program manager NetSpend Holdings Inc.’s IPO caused by regulatory problems at MetaBank, the prepaid card program manager’s main issuing partner, cleared Monday, enabling NetSpend to go through with the stock offering at the mid-point of its projected price range. And on Tuesday afternoon, NetSpend’s …

Two years after talk started that the major card networks had designs on Canada’s debit card market, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Visa Canada announced Monday that CIBC was introducing the country’s first Visa-branded debit card. The card, dubbed the CIBC Advantage Card, is good in Canada only for …

Banks are abandoning their dreams of ATMs generating profits and instead returning to their original focus of using the machines for customer service, according to new findings from First Annapolis Consulting Inc. Linthicum, Md.-based First Annapolis spoke with executives from the nation’s 10 largest banks by assets about their ATM …