Competitive Strategies

The links between the growing payment sectors of prepaid cards and online banking just got a little tighter with the creation by Online Resources Corp. of a new service that lets consumers buy private-label gift cards through their financial institutions' online banking and bill-payment sites. The service, called CardHQ, currently …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

Bill-payment processor Online Resources Corp. on Thursday reported sharply higher third quarter numbers for transactions, clients, and users as the Chantilly, Va.-based company for the first time included results from rival processor Princeton eCom Corp. Online Resources, which acquired Princeton eCom for $180 million this summer, also said its integration …

Beyond a recent press release, First Data Corp. hasn't made a huge public splash about its new payment terminal, the FD-100. Yet the terminal is not just a box that processes payment card transactions. It's an element of First Data's multipronged strategy to get more business from small and mid-sized …

The reorganization of the Visa bank card association will allow the resulting company to invest in new payments technologies and cultivate promising new acceptance markets, but the ultimate impact on the way the business sets interchange pricing is unknown, says a spokesperson for Visa International, the umbrella organization that has …

Qpass Inc., whose software handles mobile-commerce transactions for wireless networks, processed almost $500 million in digital-content sales, up 50% over the like period in 2005, according to Amdocs Inc., Qpass's parent company. Transaction volume grew at an average quarterly rate of 12% in the period, Amdocs said. The St. Louis-based …

Facing many of the same pressures that led its rival MasterCard Inc. to go public earlier this year, Visa announced on Wednesday it plans to scuttle the membership-association structure that has characterized it throughout its 36-year history in favor of a sweeping reorganization that will lead to ownership by the …