News

March, 2013

• 5 March

  VeriFone Outlines a Recovery Plan for Its ‘Self-Inflicted’ Wounds

    Heads look like they’re going to roll at troubled point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. as it begins what chief executive Douglas Bergeron calls a “rebuilding year” in the wake of missteps that contributed to lower-than-expected revenues. Bergeron told stock analysts Tuesday that the company has initiated “an exhaustive …
• 4 March

  Illinois Cites Square and NetSpend for Not Having Money-Transmitter Licenses

  A spate of cease-and-desist orders by the state of Illinois against unlicensed money transmitters has ensnared eight payments companies, including such prominent ones as Square Inc. and NetSpending Holdings Inc. An agency quietly issued orders against both firms in January that seemingly would prevent them from doing business in the …

February, 2013

• 28 February

  Is Chase Merchant Services an Omen of a Diminished Role for Merchant Acquirers?

  Could the new Chase Merchant Services (CMS) processing entity announced Feb. 26 by JPMorgan Chase and Co. and Visa Inc. be a harbinger of a major change in the way bank card payments operate? The payments industry is abuzz with talk about how CMS could shake things up by enabling …
• 27 February

  With the Garden State’s Greenlight, Online Gambling’s Odds Look Better for Acquirers

  Now that New Jersey has become the third state to legalize online gambling, the market for the first time in years has begun to offer possibilities to acquirers as a promising new source of transaction volume. But questions remain about how and how soon the new state laws will be …
• 26 February

  A 10-Year Visa-Chase Deal Will Include Direct Issuer Links to Select Merchants

  Visa Inc. and banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Tuesday announced a 10-year partnership that promises to shake up the merchant-acquiring world by creating direct links between card issuers and merchants. Chase, which owns the nation’s second-largest acquirer, Chase Paymentech, is licensing a private version of Visa’s VisaNet transaction-processing …
• 25 February

  MasterCard Starts Rollout for MasterPass, Its Open Digital-Wallet Platform

  Nine months after unveiling its digital-wallet strategy, MasterCard Inc. on Monday announced the start of that strategy’s implementation. Known as MasterPass, the new wallet platform enables mobile payments by consumers using either near-field communication (NFC) technology or quick-response (QR) codes to trigger links between handsets and merchant terminals. Wallets based …
• 25 February

  Visa Teams up with Samsung And Roam To Develop Mobile Payments

  Visa Inc. is teaming up with the hot smart-phone manufacturer Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to kick-start the market for near-field communication (NFC) payments, and it’s also got a deal with technology provider Roam to develop mobile payments. Under an agreement with South Korea-based Samsung that Visa announced Monday, banks and …
• 21 February

  VeriFone’s Stock Plummets After the Company Cuts Its Financial Outlook

    The funk at VeriFone Systems Inc. continued late Wednesday when the leading point-of-sale terminal maker said revenues and profits for its first quarter of fiscal 2013 ended Jan. 31 would come in far short of earlier predictions. The downward forecast triggered a selloff in VeriFone’s shares, whose price was …
• 21 February

  Security Firms Start to Respond to Online Fraud Fears Triggered by Arrival of Chip Cards

    With the United States playing catch-up with Canada and much of Europe in deploying chip card technology, security firms are starting to respond to online operators’ fears that the arrival of chips at the point of sale will drive fraud to the Internet. One of the latest of these …
• 20 February

  Pulse’s Tie to Acculynk Furthers Trend Toward EFT-Based P2P Services

    The effort to harness debit card networks for near-instant person-to-person payments is moving apace. The latest development is this week’s announcement that the Houston-based Pulse electronic funds transfer network has enabled a service that will let cardholders pay each other by entering their debit card PINs on a so-called …