Marketing

Often overlooked as the trend toward mobile payments picks up steam is the extent to which mobile phones, and especially smart phones, influence transactions even if they aren’t used to consummate them. The most recent example of this notion is a finding by IDC Retail Insights that 28% of consumers’ …

Banks that have both issuing and merchant-acquiring operations might generate more charge volume and make more money if they started taking advantage of new opportunities presented by online group-couponing companies, merchant-funded rewards programs, and mobile-phone-based marketers to help their merchant clients increase sales, Aite Group LLC says in a new …

Closed-loop prepaid cards are growing more slowly than their newer, open-loop cousins, but recent numbers from big payment card processor First Data Corp. show the closed-loop sector still has plenty of life. First Data’s monthly SpendTrend report for October shows reload dollar volumes on closed-loop cards increased 25.2% from October …

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,” …

Citigroup Inc. revealed on Tuesday it will start a pilot next month for a new type of credit card that will let cardholders apply rewards they’ve earned by pressing a button on the card. The pilot for the new card, which Citi has dubbed its 2G credit card, will start …

In an apparent first in the debit card market, MasterCard Inc. has a struck a deal with Delta Air Lines Inc. to build a national network of issuers of Delta SkyMiles cobranded debit cards bearing the MasterCard logo. Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc. currently is the sole issuer of Delta debit …

With interchange and overdraft-fee revenues under withering political and regulatory attack, debit card issuers can point to one bright spot in their quest for growth—instance issuance of cards in bank and credit-union branches. Some 35% of financial institutions offered the service in 2009, up from 28% in 2008, according to …

Visa Inc. sees its new RightCliq shopping service as a means by which it can control more e-commerce transaction volume. But it might also represent a tactic by which it can add value to payments at a time when payment processing is increasingly perceived by merchants and consumers as a …

A provision in the new Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 that exempts some reloadable prepaid cards from interchange regulation could make such cards an attractive option for retailers. But merchants were heavily promoting reloadable gift cards long before the legislation appeared for another reason: to …

While social media sites are wildly popular with consumers, it turns out those same users give the sites low scores for satisfaction, ranking the category above only airlines and cable and satellite TV providers, according to a report released on Tuesday. Still, that dissatisfaction is unlikely to affect payments processors …