News

October, 2006

• 18 October

  TSYS Battered But Not Broken, Top Execs Say, Citing New Business

  Top executives of card processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) on Wednesday portrayed a company that may be a bit bruised but is heading for better times. Columbus, Ga.-based TSYS even upped its 2006 profit projections and says earnings next year won't decline as much as previously forecast. TSYS late …
• 17 October

  Visa: Too Early to Tell How Restructuring Will Impact Interchange

  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 …
• 16 October

  Content Sales Surge for Qpass As Games, Video Push up Tickets

  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 …
• 13 October

  CheckFree Leverages Existing POS Gear for Walk-in Bill Payments

  Looking to bolster its business with retailers, Atlanta-based CheckFree Corp. this week unveiled its CheckFreePay Link service aimed at helping stores draw more walk-in traffic by offering bill-payment services for local utilities and other billers. CheckFree Pay's existing CheckFreePay network has 11,000 agent sites located in check-cashing outlets, grocery stores, …
• 11 October

  Market Forces, Including Interchange Cases, Spur Visa to Plan for IPO

  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 …
• 11 October

  E-Retailers’ Appetite for Payments Hikes PayPal, Checkout Acceptance

  It's not yet four months old, but already Google Inc.'s Checkout Internet payment service is making an impact, with 7% of online retailers surveyed in recent weeks by CyberSource Corp. having adopted it. That compares with 35% for PayPal, 24% for e-checks and other automated clearing house debits, and 16% …
• 10 October

  Debitman Beefs up Issuer Ranks With Wawa, Promises More to Come

  Debitman Card Inc., the PIN-debit alternative network to the major card brands, on Monday signed on another issuer, and one of its top executives says more issuer announcements are coming. Getting retailers to issue as well as accept Debitman has been a major initiative for the San Mateo, Calif.-based company, …
• 9 October

  TrueMe ID Is a Precursor to Online Payments, Pay By Touch Says

  Pay By Touch Inc., which on Monday introduced a new, personal-computer-based authentication service based on fingerprint identification, plans to couple the new service with online payments and loyalty programs some time in the first half of 2007. The new product, called TrueMe, relies on the San Francisco company's technology, along …
• 9 October

  As Image Exchange Traffic Climbs, More Banks Clear Image Files

  Image-exchange volumes continue to climb at a steady pace, and so does the volume of checks settled through image networks as images rather than as paper substitute checks, new data show. SVPCO's Image Payments Network, which links 15 large financial institutions and is the country's largest image-exchange system, reported Monday …
• 6 October

  No Single Strategy Will Unlock the Pint-Size Payments Market

  Consumers spend up to $1.5 trillion a year using on small purchases using cash, depending on who's estimating, but converting so-called micropayments into electronics will be one of the payment card industry's tougher challenges. Experts contacted by this newsletter's sister publication Digital Transactions magazine for an upcoming story on micropayments …