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Visa Inc. is taking steps to more actively recruit consumers in its fraud-fighting efforts, including the development of an early-warning system that notifies cardholders in real-time when their cards are being used. Visa's Transaction Alert system, currently in pilot at banks including U.S. Bank, PNC Corp., and Wells Fargo & …
Read More »A New Service Lets Car Renters Pay Tolls with RFID Transponders
A new service from specialty payment-services provider Highway Toll Administration LLC seeks to boost electronic toll-booth payments by making toll transponders available to customers who reserve rental cars through the big online travel booking site Travelocity.com. Great Neck, N.Y.-based HTA introduced the mail-order service, called TravelPass, Jan. 29. “The TravelPass …
Read More »‘Difficult’ Times Hammer the Centurion’s Card And Acquiring Results
The message this week from the top brass at American Express Co. is: Times are bad, but no worse at AmEx than elsewhere in the payments industry. American Express, the third-largest payment card network, is still making money, though a lot less of it: $172 million in the fourth quarter, …
Read More »That Sucking Sound Is the Downdraft in Big Banks’ Charge Volumes
The latest credit card charge-volume figures from the nation's top three banks show big declines, portending weak results when other issuers, merchant acquirers, and Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. report their fourth-quarter earnings in coming days. On Friday, Bank of America Corp. reported fourth-quarter purchase volume of $56.6 billion on …
Read More »How Some Retailers Have Bolstered Their Gift Cards’ Firepower
Closed-loop gift cards are not the new kids on the block any more, but some retailers in 2008's holiday shopping season found ways to wring more usage out of their cards despite the faltering economy and bad press about gift cards. That's the word from a newly released market assessment …
Read More »Banks Make Strides in Fighting ID Fraud, But Lag in Mobile Alerts
Financial institutions have made big strides in fighting identity fraud over the past year but still lag in preventing the crime by using such technologies as mobile alerts, according to a report released this week by Javelin Strategy & Research. “Despite so many consumers having mobile devices, banks are still …
Read More »U.S. Bank Hikes Contactless Adoption with Targeted Issuance
Nearly one-third of U.S. Bank customers who have been issued a contactless debit card have performed at least one contactless transaction since the bank's program began in June, an executive with the bank said on Wednesday. “So far, it's looking really promising,” Michael Shepard, group product manager for consumer credit …
Read More »MasterCard Sees New Service As a Big Step Toward Commercial NFC
MasterCard Inc. on Thursday announced a service it sees as a major step toward the ultimate commericialization of contactless payments via mobile phones. Intended primarily for the North American and European markets, the MasterCard Over-the-Air Provisioning Service is aimed at allowing any member issuer to readily personalize a handset for …
Read More »New BBB-Backed Payroll Card Program Aims at Fast Growth
In the hunt for a trustworthy partner, a prepaid card issuer and payment card network probably couldn't do better than the Better Business Bureau. That's the theory, at least, behind the new MasterCard-branded TrustCard, a payroll card issued by Palm Desert National Bank that initially is being offered by the …
Read More »Canada Is Set to Start a National Rollout of Chip-Equipped Debit Cards
Canada's financial institutions will start issuing microchip-embedded debit cards by the end of the year, the country's national electronic funds transfer network said on Tuesday. The rollout of chip cards, which follows a year-long pilot of so-called chip-and-PIN technology in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, area, will over the course of four …
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