Credit Cards

Congress may be taking the week off for its annual Fourth of July recess, but the interchange fireworks are sure to resume after lawmakers return next week. Banks and the payment card networks, which oppose the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 in the House of Representatives and its …

Just as some merchant-acquiring industry lobbyists predicted earlier this year, a revenue-generating proposal that would force acquirers to report their clients' card-based sales to the Internal Revenue Service is making headway in Congress. The proposal is part of the Senate's foreclosure-relief bill that could be up for a vote as …

A seemingly unremarkable magnetic-stripe card reader from a software company specializing in payment applications for users of eBay Inc.'s online merchant marketplace and its PayPal payment system is just hitting the market, but it could mark another advance for PayPal into the world of point-of-sale payments. The reader and its …

While most of the high-profile data breaches involving card numbers have happened at point-of-sale merchants, consumers continue to express reluctance about entering card information at e-commerce sites. And, for at least some of these sites, such consumer concerns may be justified, according to Nicholas J. Percoco, vice president of consulting …

Six specialty types of vendors, processors, and other service providers that card issuers use lack specific guidelines on how to protect cardholder data under the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, according to a recent report from research firm TowerGroup Inc. These service providers thus represent “hot spots” that …

The federal government took in $27.1 billion in payments through credit cards in fiscal 2007 and paid at least $433 million in merchant discount fees, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Agencies that were able to break out their interchange costs …

Internet banking and bill-payment services provider Online Resources Corp. this week unveiled its expedited bill-pay service for financial institutions and walk-up providers to offer to consumers and small-business users, ratcheting up rivalries in the fast-growing realm of last-minute payments. While the expedited bill-pay market has some bigger competitors, including Fiserv …

The opponents and defenders of bank card interchange had their say on Thursday before the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee. What's next for the controversial Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008, however, is uncertain. The bipartisan bill introduced by panel chairman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and Rep. Christopher …

French chipmaker Inside Contactless this week announced it has shipped more than 50 million MicroPass chips for contactless payments since introducing the product in November 2005. And, though the company used the occasion to promote its optimism about contactless payments in North America particularly, a number of observers remain skeptical …

The rules for protecting cardholder data will be updated in October, the PCI Security Standards Council announced on Wednesday. The PCI Council, the organization the payment card networks set up in 2006 to oversee the so-called Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI DSS, is billing the coming changes more …