Debit Cards

Visa USA reported yesterday its total dollar volume in 2004 reached $1.3 trillion, up 17.9% from the previous year. Total sales volume, or dollars on Visa products at the point of sale, hit $1.045 trillion, an increase of 19.1%, the San Francisco-based bank card network says. All Visa-branded cards in …

MasterCard International reports its U.S. dollar volume on transactions on all of its products except online debit cards grew 11.5% in the fourth quarter last year, to $188.5 billion, while U.S. volume for 2004 as a whole expanded by 9.3%, to $695.9 billion. Total MasterCard purchase and cash transactions in …

First Data Corp., which spent much of last year integrating its massive acquisition of Concord EFS Inc., has picked up another potentially huge source of transaction volume by winning the processing business for the new Wal-Mart/Discover card announced last week. As a result of the agreement, the Denver-based transaction-processing giant …

North American Health Plans Inc., one of the country's largest third-party administrators of self-funded health-care plans, has begun using Visa- and MasterCard-branded debit cards from Evolution Benefits Inc., an Avon, Conn.-based processor. North American, Buffalo, N.Y., began Jan. 1 issuing Evolution Benefits' cards linked to flexible-spending accounts for its own …

Discover Financial Services Inc. and Pulse EFT Association announced today that Discover's $311-million acquisition of the Houston-based electronic funds transfer network, announced in November, has closed. The deal's completion follows approval of the merger by Pulse's member banks, and, according to Discover, more than doubles the company's U.S. card base …

VeriFone Inc. will continue to be controlled by GTCR Golder Rauner LLC, a Chicago-based private equity firm, and its current chief executive, Douglas Bergeron, will continue to be a major shareholder even after the San Jose, Calif.-based point of sale terminal maker completes its proposed initial public offering of stock. …

Washington Mutual Inc.'s decision to switch its 10.5-million-card debit portfolio to MasterCard International from Visa U.S.A., though a big win for MasterCard, doesn't necessarily herald a trend, observers say. At the same time, it throws into relief a bylaw Visa quietly put into place in 2003 that penalizes large debit-card-issuing …

Visa reports the holiday shopping season generated a 15.7% increase in dollar volume on its card products compared to the same time last year, with volume reaching $218.7 billion on all Visa-branded cards in the Nov. 1 to Jan. 2 period. Consumer spending on the company's debit cards grew 26.2%, …

Technical Transportation Inc. announces it has added ATM support to its delivery service for high-value, heavy machines. The 15-year-old company, based in Dallas, says it will now deliver, install, and test ATMs, bringing them from manufacturer to location and working through a network of agents and technicians. The company says …

UnitedHealth Group is on track to issue as many as 20 million cards that consumers can one day use for a dual purpose: to handle eligibility verification and other point-of-care payment transactions and as a debit card to electronically access funds from a health-savings account. To date UnitedHealth has issued …