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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 …
Read More »‘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 …
Read More »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 …
Read More »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% …
Read More »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 …
Read More »Western Union’s Expedited Offering Nears the Starting Gate
It's been a year since wire-transfer market leader The Western Union Co. announced that it would introduce an expedited bill-payment service with technology provider Yodlee Inc. that banks and credit unions could offer their customers (Digital Transactions News, Oct. 10, 2007). With the operational work nearing completion, the first financial …
Read More »Off-eBay Volume Tops Auction Payments for the First Time at PayPal
After months of steady gains, the merchant-services portion of PayPal Inc.'s transaction volume topped the volume coming from eBay Inc auctions for the first time in the third quarter, eBay reported on Wednesday. In line with this result, the online auctioneer also reported PayPal has been adopted by 35 of …
Read More »More Big Merchants Comply, But PCI Likely Still Foreign to Small Fry
New data from Visa Inc. show more of the largest merchants now meet the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI. But the level of validated PCI compliance among small merchants?the overwhelming majority of businesses that accept credit and debit cards?likely remains much lower. Visa's latest figures show 81% of …
Read More »Plenty of Upside for eBay in Bill Me Later Deal, Experts Say
Ebay Inc.'s $945 million acquisition of online payment processor Bill Me Later Inc., announced this week (Digital Transactions News, Oct. 6), places a powerful payment-generating tool in the online auctioneer's hands and simultaneously denies that tool to competitors like Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., experts tell Digital Transactions News. And …
Read More »Visa Looks to Imaging ATMs to Offer Prepaid Card Reloads
Prepaid cards usually get reloaded through direct deposit or when the cardholder takes cash to a merchant, who then swipes the card and receives confirmation that the value has been credited to the card. Now Visa Inc., in an effort to expand its Visa ReadyLink prepaid card reload network, is …
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