Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Pressed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Visa Inc. has changed its operating rules to allow PINless debit card transactions for small-ticket purchases, just as it waives the signature requirement for low-value purchases on its signature-based Visa check card. Tuesday's announcement by the DoJ revealed a debit card investigation that …
Read More »Security Fears Remain a High Hurdle for New Payments Technologies
Technology's great, but new payments platforms and systems will have to overcome consumers' security fears even if banks, processors, and technology vendors think such fears are overblown. That was one of the messages from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's 2008 Payments Conference on Friday, a conference specifically devoted to …
Read More »How U.S. Bank Hopes To Catch a Wave in Contactless Payments
Riding the swelling wave of issuer interest in contactless payment cards, Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp this week launched a program to issue Visa Inc.'s payWave contactless cards on debit accounts in California, Colorado, Missouri, and Utah. The bank didn't say how many cards it plans to issue. Customers who already have …
Read More »Bullish Projections Mask Usage Problem for Contactless Payments
French chipmaker Inside Contactless this week announced it has shipped more than 50 million MicroPass chips for contactless payments since introducing the product in November 2005. And, though the company used the occasion to promote its optimism about contactless payments in North America particularly, a number of observers remain skeptical …
Read More »After Two Months, Signs Are Positive for Multi-Account NFC Pilot
While hard data are not yet available, anecdotal evidence indicates consumers are pleased with a mobile-payments pilot in San Francisco using phones equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology and involving the Bay Area Rapid Transit rail system and Jack in the Box Inc. fast-food restaurants. “We've supported thousands of rides …
Read More »How Mobile Candy Dish Combines Handset-Based P-to-P with NFC
A 3-year-old startup in Alameda, Calif., is introducing a mobile wallet that combines contactless payments based on near-field communication (NFC) technology with person-to-person payments and mobile banking. Mobile Candy Dish Inc. last week rolled out its Blaze Mobile Wallet, which works on the AT&T Mobility and Sprint Nextel wireless networks …
Read More »WaMu’s Contactless Plunge Could Win over Skeptical Merchants
Washington Mutual Inc.'s announcement this week that it plans to issue 12 million to 15 million debit cards with MasterCard Inc.'s PayPass contactless functionality this year may do more than make the $328 billion bank the No. 1 PayPass issuer. It just might give the nascent contactless market enough critical …
Read More »New York-New Jersey Mass Transit Plans Contactless Pilot
Contactless payment took another step forward in the mass-transit market with the announcement on Thursday by two key New York City-area transportation agencies that they will run a pilot of MasterCard Worldwide's PayPass system next year. The Port Authority will install contactless readers at 40 turnstiles in all 13 of …
Read More »Citi Makes a Down Payment on M-Payments with ViVOtech Stake
Getting financial institutions and telecommunications providers to agree on major issues related to mobile payments is one of the most difficult problems faced by the nascent mobile-payments industry. Nonetheless, some banks want to plant a stake on the mobile-payments turf early, as evidenced by the announcement this week that Citigroup …
Read More »TSYS Joins Rivals First Data, Metavante in Mobile Banking And Payments
With its announcement on Thursday that it is working with a U.K. provider to enable mobile access to credit card accounts in the U.S., Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) has joined rival payments processors First Data Corp. and Metavante Corp. in entering the nascent but highly promising business of mobile …
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