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USA Technologies Inc., a Malvern, Pa.-based vendor of card-reading devices for vending machines, this week announced another pact with MasterCard Inc. that will put USA Technologies' e-Port G6 magnetic-stripe and contactless payment card readers in 4,000-plus more vending machines. The deal represents the fourth between the two companies in the …
Read More »Embroiled in Boardroom Fight, Pay By Touch Gets a Temporary Boss
An outside manager with restructuring experience, Thomas Lumsden of FTI Consulting Inc., is now running financially troubled biometric-payment provider Pay By Touch under terms of a Delaware court order signed Friday, San Francisco-based Pay By Touch announced on Monday. The Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington appointed Lumsden, senior managing director …
Read More »Saddled with Post-IPO Debt, First Data Shaves Costs with Layoffs
The ax is falling at First Data Corp. two months after the huge processor's $29 billion leveraged buyout by private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data announced Thursday that it is cutting 6% of its workforce, or about 1,700 employees. Thanks to recent acquisitions, however, …
Read More »E-Commerce Fraud Rate Holds Steady, But Fraud-Control Costs Go Up
Online fraud rates are holding steady but the cost of fraud is going up as e-commerce grows and companies hire more people to weed out suspect orders, according to CyberSource Corp.'s 9th annual e-commerce fraud survey. The merchant processor and risk-management firm's recent survey of 318 American and Canadian retailers …
Read More »Consumers And Wall Street Yawn at the Biggest Breach Yet
Off-price retailer TJX Cos. Inc. might hold the dubious honor of being the merchant where the nation's worst breach of payment card data occurred, but you'd never know it by looking at the company's latest financials. Revenue and profits are up, and executives made only passing reference to the breach …
Read More »Though Still Shaky, a Smaller TRM Gets Closer to Profitability
Still financially challenged but claiming to be on the mend, TRM Corp., operator of the nation's second-largest non-bank ATM network, reduced its loss in the third quarter as it culled underperforming machines and cut expenses. The Portland, Ore.-based firm on Friday reported a net loss of $4.89 million compared with …
Read More »PCI Council: Software Security Guidelines To Be a Standard
In a move long expected by software developers, merchant processors, and others, the PCI Security Standards Council this week said it is adding a new standard for point-of-sale software based on Visa Inc.'s set of best practices for card-processing applications. The action is aimed at strengthening the software component of …
Read More »Pay By Touch Melodrama Includes Board Fight and Possible Bankruptcy
Biometrics payment technology provider Pay By Touch reaped a bushel of favorable publicity last week when it launched its fingerprint-based system at 10 Chicago-area Shell stations in the company's first petroleum-sector rollout. What went unmentioned, however, was that Pay By Touch's parent company was entangled in court fights on the …
Read More »New Fed Pricing Expected to Spur Further Moves to Electronic Processing
The Federal Reserve Board is cutting its fees for handling Check 21 items delivered to paying banks electronically but raising tariffs for processing paper checks and the substitute checks authorized under Check 21, a Fed announcement released on Tuesday says. Effective Jan. 2, the Fed's new rates for 2008 will …
Read More »Merchants’ PCI Travails Prompt Security Program from Big Blue
With compliance deadlines already passed for some merchants and looming for others, the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) has drawn a bevy of vendors into the market to help merchants cope with one or more of its dozen requirements. Now the biggest vendor yet is jumping in. IBM Corp. …
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