Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
It’s time for bankers to stop looking at mobile technology merely as a cost cutter and start using it to make money, said speakers at a retail-banking technology conference on Tuesday. Banks that add a variety of new services to their mobile offerings ranging from in-store bar-code scanning to expedited …
October, 2012
-
10 October
Groupon Supplements Its New Payment Service With the iPad-based Breadcrumb System
n Online daily-deal leader Groupon Inc. followed up on its big payments announcement of last month with Wednesday’s national rollout of its Breadcrumb service, a point-of-sale system for restaurants, cafes, and bars centered on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer. n Breadcrumb itself is not a payments service, but is …
-
8 October
AmEx And Wal-Mart Pursue the ‘Unhappily Banked’ with Their New Bluebird Prepaid Card
In a play for the business of what an American Express Co. executive calls “the unhappily banked,” AmEx and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday introduced their Bluebird prepaid card for U.S. customers of the world’s largest retailer. The card not only expands the consumer markets that AmEx, normally associated with …
-
8 October
Debit Card Rewards Hang Tough After One Year of Durbin Interchange Caps
The obituaries for debit card rewards may be premature. Of the 100 largest issuers of debit cards ranked by debit purchase volume, 37 now offer a rewards program, down from 52 three years ago. But 19 issuers with $10 billion or more in assets still offer a program, despite a …
-
4 October
Wal-Mart Just One of Many Merchants Behind MCX, Best Buy Exec Says
Merchant Customer Exchange, the planned mobile-payments network by and for retailers, is more than an interchange play controlled by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to an executive whose company is represented on the nascent network’s board of directors. Stephanie Swain, senior director of financial services at electronics retailer Best Buy Co. …
-
4 October
FIS Heats up Faster Funds Trend with Its PayNet Real-Time Network
The nascent market for faster funds transfers, which has been on the boil all year, heated up further this week with Fidelity National Information Services Inc.’s announcement of its real-time PayNet network. The new system, which relies on FIS’s NYCE Payments Network LLC debit switch, is live with 200 FIS …
-
3 October
Acquirers Bear Burden to Warn Small Merchants About EMV Risk Shift, Processor Exec Says
With a major chip card standard bearing down on U.S. merchants, acquirers, and issuers, small merchants in particular could face tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in annual fraud losses they are currently protected from, a processor executive argues. Patty Walters, senior vice president for merchant products and …
-
3 October
Tab for Global Payments Data Breach Could Total About $120 Million
Global Payments Inc. still expects it could spend about $120 million as a result of the data breach it reported in early March, but new information from the company gives a glimpse of just where that money is going. The big merchant processor, however, didn’t give any new details in …
-
1 October
For POS Push, PayPal Snags Big-Time Processors But Works to Woo ISOs As Well
The deals PayPal Inc. and Discover Financial Services disclosed last week with processors Vantiv Inc. and Global Payments Inc. are just the start of PayPal’s efforts to win acceptance at physical merchants. PayPal is also starting to woo independent sales organizations to help push its mark into potentially millions of …
-
1 October
On One-Year Anniversary, Heartland Says ‘Durbin Dollars’ Helping Merchants, Consumers
Almost universally derided by banks and payment card networks, the Durbin Amendment debit card interchange price controls that took effect a year ago Monday have received mixed reviews from merchant acquirers. But one big acquirer that made Durbin a key part of its sales and retention efforts early on, Heartland …