Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Counter-intuitive though it may be, independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers in general are seeing their spreads increase while simultaneously facing margin compression. The reason, according to a new report from Aite Group LLC assessing trends in the acquiring industry: acquirers are generating new revenues from their merchants outside of …
Read More »MasterCard Cuts Interchange for Rent, Utilities, and Insurance
Apartments and other rental real estate such as vacation properties, one of the great remaining virgin markets for electronic payments, could get a boost in April when a new MasterCard Inc. interchange incentive takes effect that will lower card-acceptance costs for property managers. MasterCard's program is intended to direct more …
Read More »How an Incentive Boom Could Push Visa, MasterCard into Acquiring
Locked in increasingly fierce competition with each other and with other card networks, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide are paying out higher and higher sums to issuers and merchants in the form of rebates and incentives, a trend that not only hurts the bank card networks' yield on each dollar …
Read More »Hy-Vee Gives Thumbs up to BOC, Works on Chainwide Rollout
In a major vote of confidence for an 11-month-old form of electronic payment, Hy-Vee Inc., a 224-unit supermarket chain based in West Des Moines, Iowa, has installed back-office conversion (BOC) in 21 of its stores in the Des Moines area since last August and plans to roll out the system …
Read More »Report: Merchants Need Interchange Breaks to Adopt Contactless
An absence of incentives?particularly for merchants?is handicapping contactless payments in the U.S., and by extension mobile payment at the point of sale could suffer, according to a new report. About 40,000 U.S. merchants now accept contactless cards and fobs, or 0.5% of all merchant locations. That number will grow to …
Read More »Banks Face an ISO Challenge in Remote Capture for Health Care
Banks and processors looking for a way in to the potentially lucrative market for health-care payments could do worse than to cultivate that market for remote deposit capture, says an expert in electronic check processing. But while hospitals and clinics represent a wide-open opportunity for banks, it's not one that …
Read More »Survey Hints at Role of Free Processing in Rise of Alternative Payments
The trend toward acceptance of so-called alternative-payment products by online merchants is going strong and will likely continue for some time, driven largely by incentives for merchants and consumers alike and by ease of use, says Adam Cohen, principal at Brulant Inc., an interactive advertising agency in Cleveland. “I would …
Read More »Consumers Want Just One Account for NFC Payments, Survey Says
Many consumers seem willing to use their cell phones or other mobile devices for in-store payments, but the majority wants to have only one credit or debit card account enabled for wireless payments, according to new findings from New York City-based technology research firm ABI Research. The preference for just …
Read More »A Big BOC Processor Looks for Big Growth for the E-Check in 2008
Introduced only last March, the back-office conversion (BOC) e-check application is poised for a big year in 2008, according to a check-services vendor that is processing more than one-third of all BOC volume. “We think there's going to be big growth for BOC in 2008, and we're going to be …
Read More »EC Ruling on MasterCard Interchange Could Foster Regulation in the U.S.
A European Commission ruling that MasterCard Worldwide's interchange-fee structure is illegal in that region will affect relatively few transactions in Europe but could encourage regulators?including those in the U.S.?to act on interchange, among other bleak implications for bank and network executives. “On balance, the EC decision is negative,” says Eric …
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