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A Woodside, Calif.-based startup company today began commercial production of a two-factor authentication system for Internet transactions and also announced its first customer for the product. PassMark Security LLC, which was founded last year, has sold its PassMark identification system to Stanford Federal Credit Union, Palo Alto, Calif. The 18-year-old …
Read More »AmEx: Walgreen’s Changed Its Mind Without Pricing Concessions
American Express Co. made no pricing concessions to Walgreen's Co. to keep the pharmacy giant accepting AmEx cards, a top executive says. Responding to questions from securities analysts during a conference call yesterday to discuss AmEx's fourth-quarter and year-end 2004 results, Gary L. Crittenden, chief financial officer at the New …
Read More »Why Piggly Wiggly Decided to Roll Out Biometric Payments
Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co.'s decision to roll out a biometric payment system to all 85 stores in its chain was driven by both transaction-cost savings and customer interest, a senior executive for the Charleston, S.C.-based grocer says. In related news, Pay By Touch, the San Francisco-based company whose system Piggly …
Read More »CVS Will Roll Out AmEx’s ExpressPay, But AmEx Loses Walgreen’s
It has been an eventful week for American Express Co. Today the company announced that Woonsocket, R.I.-based drugstore chain CVS Corp. has agreed to serve as the first national merchant to accept ExpressPay, an AmEx system that relies on radio waves rather than card swipes to authorize transactions. This news …
Read More »Hypercom’s Networking Unit Wraps up a Promising First Year
An upstart supplier of transaction-networking infrastructure that was set up by a major maker of point-of-sale terminals has signed a dozen contracts since it began U.S. operations in April and is carrying transactions at the rate of 65 million a month. “It's been a very busy and successful last six …
Read More »Between 10% and 15% of Debit Card Holders Pay PIN Fees, Says Fed
About 14% of financial institutions that issue debit cards charge fees for PIN debit transactions, and in the past year 15% of debit card holders were subject to the fees, with somewhere between 10% and 15% of customers actually paying them. Fewer than 1% of banks, meanwhile, assess fees to …
Read More »Celent: Image Exchange Will Nearly Pull the Plug on Check Conversion
Image exchange will account for 93% of all transit checks by 2010, marginalizing what are now some highly popular forms of electronic check conversion, including the fastest-growing form of e-check, account receivable conversion (ARC), according to new projections from Celent Communications. The New York-based research firm says today's nascent image-exchange …
Read More »Visa Cuts Interchange for Utilities That Forgo Surcharges
Hoping to increase its penetration in consumer bill payments to gas, electricity, and other utility companies, Visa USA today rolled out incentives for utilities to accept its cards and to encourage more card transactions. The incentives include a lower credit and check card interchange fee on certain consumer card transactions …
Read More »Visa’s New Debit Rates Help Interlink But Could Anger Merchants
Visa's decision to increase its interchange rates for PIN debit transactions on its Interlink network may generate more revenue for the network's issuers but will also create more interest in competing non-bank networks catering to merchants, according to some observers. Visa yesterday released a four-page document to member banks outlining …
Read More »PayPal Will Credit Seller Fees Tomorrow to Say ‘Sorry’ for Outage
In an effort to make amends to sellers that were affected by its recent service outage, PayPal Inc. will credit all seller transaction fees incurred between 12 a.m. and midnight Pacific time tomorrow. Accounts eligible to receive the credits, which PayPal will distribute by Nov. 25, are premier and business …
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