News

January, 2016

• 4 January

  Wall Street Gave a Thumbs Up to Payments Companies in 2015

  It was a lousy December for payment stocks, but 2015 as a whole saw shares of electronic transaction processors far outperform the major market indexes, according to a new report from Chicago-based investment firm Barrington Research Associates Inc. Shares of 28 payments companies posted a mean return of 11.47% last …
• 4 January

  Looming Federal Rules Lend Note of Caution to Strong Outlook for Prepaid Card Market

  Open-loop financial-services prepaid cards will be one of the fastest-growing segments for prepaid over the next two years, forecasts the “12th Annual U.S. Prepaid Cards Market Forecasts, 2015-2018,” recently released by Mercator Advisory Group Inc. The report, which gauges the growth potential of both open-loop and closed-loop prepaid cards, also …

December, 2015

• 30 December

  The Data-Breach Seesaw: Card Compromises Down, Social Security Exposures Up

  Data breaches that compromised credit and debit card information were constantly in the news in 2015, but the number of cards affected is way down from the totals for 2014 and 2013, according to a nonprofit that monitors breaches. The San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center reports that as of …
• 29 December

  New Visa Security Requirements Aim To Reduce Small Merchants’ Data Breaches

  Visa Inc. has announced new data-security requirements for small merchants, one of which says that beginning Jan. 31, 2017, merchant acquirers must annually validate compliance by their so-called Level 4 merchants with the Payment Card Industry data security standard. Other new Visa requirements involve qualified integrators and resellers, or QIRs. …
• 28 December

  New President Cohen Says Payments-Industry Changes Affecting ETA Mission

  As 2016 beckons, multiple challenges and opportunities await the payments industry and the Electronic Transactions Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that represents the merchant-acquiring and -processing industry. Incoming ETA board president Greg Cohen says the association, and the payments industry it represents, are in the midst of a transformation …
• 22 December

  Digital Versions Will Help Propel a Strong Holiday Season for Closed-Loop Gift Cards

  By John Stewart Market signals may be mixed, but on balance the 2015 holiday season will be a merry one for plastic and digital gift cards, according to Mercator Advisory Group. The Maynard, Mass.-based research firm’s annual forecast for November and December estimates loads on closed-loop U.S. gift cards will …
• 21 December

  E-Commerce Is Garnering a Higher Percentage of Total Holiday Sales, Says First Data

  More consumers appear to be at ease shopping online, at least during the holiday season. Online sales account for 20.6% of total sales since Oct. 31, says First Data Corp. For the same period last year, e-commerce sales accounted for 17.8% of total sales. The share of retail sales attributed …
• 21 December

  First Wal-Mart. Now Target? What Retailer Wallets Mean for MCX’s CurrentC App

  With Target Corp. reportedly planning its own mobile wallet, the nation’s fourth-largest retailer may some time next year join the largest, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in launching a proprietary wallet app. That could not only add to the fragmentation of the nascent digital-wallet market, it could also indicate weakening attachment to …
• 18 December

  The PCI Security Standards Council Extends a Key Encryption Deadline by Two Years

  By John Stewart Acting in response to comment from the industry, the PCI Security Standards Council has extended a key security deadline for payments processors, merchants, and banks by fully two years. These players now have until June 30, 2018, to stop using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption and instead …
• 18 December

  The Fed Is Tweaking Its Next Payments Survey To Get More Info on Fraud and Mobile Payments

  In payments-industry circles, the Federal Reserve System’s triennial Payments Study is one of the most eagerly awaited documents to come out of Washington. The sweeping study tracks the use of credit, debit, and prepaid cards, checks, and other non-cash payment methods. For its next survey, due out in about a …