Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Debit card interchange fees would take a draconian cut under two proposals that the Federal Reserve Board floated on Thursday. Both would set caps of 12 cents per transaction, caps that would take most of the profit out of many transactions, especially signature debit. The board also left open the …
Read More »WikiLeaks’ Defenders Go on the Attack Against Payment Firms
Supporters of WikiLeaks attacked the Visa and MasterCard Web sites on Wednesday after the bank card networks cut off donation transactions to the controversial online anti-secrecy organization that recently disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables. The attacks, which slowed down the networks’ Web sites or made …
Read More »Sales to Gas Stations Help Fuel Revenue Gains for VeriFone
Already big inside the convenience stores at thousands of gas stations, point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. is making headway at gas pumps. VeriFone on Thursday reported that petroleum-industry revenues grew 58% in its fourth fiscal 2010 quarter ended Oct. 31 over the year-earlier period. The strong petroleum results helped …
Read More »PayPal’s Opening Shots in a Scramble for T-Commerce
Having recently struck deals that will bring it to the physical point of sale, e-commerce processor PayPal Inc. has now branched into an entirely new market. Working with a television-technology specialist in Plano, Texas, PayPal has positioned itself to handle what promises to be a burgeoning flow of transactions from …
Read More »Holiday Season off to Strong Start for Online Merchants
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have ignited a promising start to the 2011 holiday spending season that appears to signal a revival in consumer spirits following a deep recession and wobbly recovery, according to a number of statistical indicators that have been released this week. Transactions on Monday at some …
Read More »Accertify Will Become Part of AmEx in $150 Million Deal
American Express Co. on Thursday announced it will pay approximately $150 million to buy a software startup in suburban Chicago whose product lets online merchants automate order screening for fraud. Founded in 2007, Accertify Inc. has built a client base that includes Barnes & Noble, Urban Outfitters, and 1800 Flowers …
Read More »MasterCard’s Debit Card Hit Is Temporary, Execs Say
MasterCard Inc.’s latest debit numbers seem to indicate the network is going backwards while bigger rival Visa Inc. is racking up 20% gains. But MasterCard executives say the company’s underlying debit card trends are positive and will start showing up in the operational reports next year. MasterCard on Tuesday reported …
Read More »As Regulation Looms, Visa Reports Recovering Volumes
The specter of regulation cast a pall of uncertainty over Visa Inc.’s latest financials, but the U.S. operating statistics the world’s largest payment network reported on Wednesday bespoke a transaction machine shifting in high, or least a higher, gear. U.S. debit card payments volume broke the trillion-dollar mark in fiscal …
Read More »PCI Council Releases ‘Steady as She Goes’ Update of Security Rules
The new version 2.0 of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) came out Thursday, an upgrade the PCI Security Standards Council says contains no major changes. Still, a document summarizing all the tweaks to the major card networks' common set of data-protection rules runs 20 pages in length. Among …
Read More »Through VeriFone, PayPal Arrives at the Mobile POS
PayPal Inc. took another step toward the physical point of sale on Tuesday with the announcement that it will work with VeriFone Systems Inc. to let merchants accept PayPal payments on VeriFone’s PAYware Mobile application. Starting early next year, merchants will be able take PayPal from customers on the application, …
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