News

October, 2008

• 28 October

  Taxes and Morgan Stanley Erode Discover’s Settlement Gains

  No. 4 payment card network Discover Financial Services will receive $2.75 billion from Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. through the settlement of a long-running antitrust lawsuit, Discover and the bank card networks announced yesterday. Discover, however, may actually pocket less than one-third of that amount after paying taxes and a …
• 28 October

  Canada Is Set to Start a National Rollout of Chip-Equipped Debit Cards

  Canada's financial institutions will start issuing microchip-embedded debit cards by the end of the year, the country's national electronic funds transfer network said on Tuesday. The rollout of chip cards, which follows a year-long pilot of so-called chip-and-PIN technology in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, area, will over the course of four …
• 27 October

  ISOs, Economic Crunch Could Spur Banks to Push Remote Capture

  While remote deposit capture continues to be one of the fastest-growing electronic payments products ever introduced, banks are still far too conservative in the way they sell the service, says Bob Meara, a senior analyst at Boston-based researcher Celent LLC. That could change soon, though, as resellers such as independent …
• 27 October

  Drop in Check Writing Cools off Once Red-Hot ACH E-Checks

  With the exception of the new back-office conversion application, or BOC, growth rates for the automated clearing house's electronic-check codes for transactions originating with paper checks declined in the third quarter. Those numbers might indicate one-time or seasonal blips, especially with the weakening economy, but they could also show that …
• 24 October

  ‘Interesting Times’ Await ISOs As Congress Eyes Card Legislation

  Merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations took a hit in Congress this year when a reporting provision passed, but other legal threats?along with possible opportunities?await next year. That's the word from payments executives and lawyers who stay abreast of Washington affairs and who spoke at an ISO conference Wednesday in …
• 23 October

  A Major Merchant Tells What It Wants To See in POS Technology

  Agents with independent sales organizations or even large merchant processors trying to sell prospective merchants on new point-of-sale technology can get the attention of decision makers, but only if they anticipate how a smart merchant will make a complex buying decision, a senior executive with the nation's largest restaurant chain …
• 23 October

  Online PIN Debit Pilot Could Lead to Commercial Service by Mid ’09

  The Accel/Exchange electronic funds transfer network said on Thursday it will launch a pilot in which it will switch PIN debit transactions originating at e-commerce stores. The pilot, which the Morris Plains, N.J.-based network will run with Acculynk Inc., a provider of PIN debit technology tailored for use online, will …
• 21 October

  Moneta Seeks Growth in Alternative Payments by Working with Banks

  With interest in so-called alternative-payments providers running high among merchants and consumers, Moneta Corp. recently announced a new management team and this week unveiled a strategy for capturing online transaction share from both bank cards and other alternative players. Speaking to Digital Transactions News, Guido Sacchi, the Atlanta-based company's newly …
• 21 October

  Downturn’s Headwinds Slow Western Union’s Bill-Pay Business

  The Western Union Co. has found out that worsening economic conditions in the United States can take a toll on seemingly sure-fire high-growth products like electronic bill payments. Western Union's third-quarter earnings report out on Tuesday shows that consumer-to-business, or bill-pay, revenues and operating income are down 2% and 10% …
• 20 October

  A Slumping Economy Hits AmEx’s Merchant-Acquiring Machine

  With the economy losing steam, American Express Co.'s lucrative merchant business is slowing down. U.S. card-billed business grew only 4% to $120.3 billion in the third quarter from $115.2 billion a year earlier, and many of the other numbers related to AmEx's U.S. merchant-acquiring business showed little growth. AmEx's core …