« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
NOVA Information Systems (NOVA), a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp, has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the merchant processing business of First Horizon Merchant Services Inc. (FHMS), a wholly owned subsidiary of First Tennessee Bank and a part of First Horizon National Corp.
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TextPayMe CEO Phil Yuen emailed me today with some updates on his recently launched mobile payments startup. » Continue Reading
In a Form 4 filing with the SEC today, former First Data Chairman and CEO Charlie Fote disclosed the sale of another 262,000 shares of First Data Corp. stock last Friday grossing about $11.8 million.
Javelin Strategy & Research and the Council of Better Business Bureaus have released some of the results from their 2006 Identity Fraud Survey reporting that "that despite growing fears the growth of identity fraud is contained and that data compromise through the Internet is actually less severe, less costly and not as widespread as previously thought." » Continue Reading
CardinalCommerce has announced it is now partnering with MODASolutions to offer SECURE-eBill, a payment option that enables consumers to shop online and pay for their purchases through the comfort and security of their online banking account. » Continue Reading
TowerGroup comments on the spin-out of Western Union from First Data Corp. as announced last Thursday. » Continue Reading
David Milstead writes for the Rocky Mountain News about former First Data Corp. Chairman and CEO Charlie Fote selling $108 million of FDC stock last Friday following the company's announcement Thursday that it would be restructuring with the spin-off of Western Union. The sale was disclosed in an SEC filing from the company yesterday.
Javelin Strategy & Research has launched a new blog where, according to Bruce Cundiff, manager of Javelin's syndicated research practice, they intend to provide more information about their research findings and more frequent insight and analysis.
Internet Retailer reports on Visa International's efforts working with Innovative Card Technologies and nCryptone to bring to market a card containing a display that will present one-time use passcodes for use in making ecommerce purchases.
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Lipman Electronic Engineering Ltd. has announced that it has received a contract to supply $7 million of customized POS terminals and pin pads to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).
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Sewell Chan reports for the New York Times on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's upcoming trial with MasterCard and Citibank of PayPass technology for payment of subway fares. » Continue Reading
FASTLANE has published a press release with a bit more background on their new driver's license-based payments network planned for official introduction at the ETA show in April. » Continue Reading
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
Visa International has published the first quarter 2006 edition of The Visa Quarterly (PDF version). Features include an interview with Tom Shepard, Visa's executive vice president of Global Sponsorship and Partnerships, a look at how electronic payments help drive growth in tourism, and an inside look at Visa's sporting sponsorships.
Sanjeev Devasia reports for MidDay from India about using mobile phone SMS messages to buy a ticket for a local train. » Continue Reading
EmigrantDirect has officially announced its add-on cash back credit card intended for customers of its American Dream high yield savings account. » Continue Reading
India's Business Standard reports on the rapid growth now underway in the number of point of sale terminals in India.
MasterCard and Citi have announced that they will be working with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and MTA New York City Transit to conduct a trial of contactless payments in select New York City subway stations with pre-selected Citi customers. » Continue Reading
HAC Inc., operator of 67 supermarkets in Oklahoma and Kansas including 49 Homeland Stores, has announced it is launching its own branded debit card, the One Card Plus, on the Debitman network at five pilot locations. Binghamton Giant Markets in Binghamton, NY has also announced its own Giant EXTRA Plus debit card program running on the Debitman network. » Continue Reading
Unisys has announced their view of the top trends affecting the banking industry in 2006. » Continue Reading
Christopher Conkey reports for the Wall St. Journal on new research by Javelin Strategy & Research and the Better Business Bureau to be released tomorrow that concludes that about 8.9 million people in the US had their personal data stolen last year as compared to 9.3 million people in 2004. » Continue Reading
Gift cards dominated the 2005 holiday season as the gift of choice for consumers, who redeemed them quickly on goods that were worth more than the value of the cards, according to the results of a recent Accenture survey of more than 500 U.S. consumers. » Continue Reading
Stephen Bartholomeusz writes for the Sydney Morning Herald about the launch of HBOS-owned BankWest's new low rate credit card along with similar offerings from non-banks Virgin Money, GE Money's Wizard and John Symond's Aussie Home Loans. » Continue Reading
Metavante has announced its MBI Benefits, Inc. affiliate will provide the national debit card for CIGNA HealthCare's popular flexible spending accounts (FSA). » Continue Reading
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
Lauren Wilbert reports for the Medill News Service on increasing consumer concerns about gift card fees and rules that are increasingly drawing the attention of legislators.
Eric Dash reported for the New York Times on Friday about how financial services companies are positioning to become central players in health savings accounts. » Continue Reading
Peter Thal Larsen reports from Davos for the Financial Times on plans by Visa International to turn its regional organizations in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America into separate companies. » Continue Reading
Harris Murray writes for the Times and Democrat in Orangeburg, SC about how she finds it reassuring to be able to see her daughter's MasterCard charges online while she's on a foreign trip away from home. » Continue Reading
The Hindustan Times reports from Hyderabad on efforts by Bangalore-based Credit Card Holders' Association of India to educate Indian consumers about the risks of credit card debt as Indian and foreign banks are ramping up their credit card marketing efforts in the country.
Aneace Haddad has recently started Aneace's Blog, a new weblog that he subtitles:
"Ideas from around the world on how to re-invent the payment transaction as a privileged moment of contact, communication and exchange between customers, merchants and their banks."Aneace is founder and chairman of payment software company Welcome Real-time, based in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France and a 20-year veteran of the point-of-sale and smart card software industry.
Over on the TextPayMe blog, the founders share why they really started this new mobile payments company:
"We wanted to split dinnertime bills easily and fairly."» Continue Reading
Marilyn Geewax reports for Cox News on Wal-Mart's applications with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to charter a new special purpose bank. The applications have provoked an uproar among community bankers who fear Wal-Mart's ambitions with the new bank. » Continue Reading
Scott Whipple reports for the New Britain Herald on how credit scores are calculated and what you can do to affect your score. » Continue Reading
Elaine Morgillo writes for New Hampshire's Portsmouth Herald about a TV ad she finds particularly annoying recommending consolidating credit card debts to lower monthly payments. She goes on to point out that the benefits of debt consolidation may not always be real - because, in the process, the borrower is often trading off lower monthly payments now for much higher interest payments over the longer term. » Continue Reading
Lisa Bachelor writes an opinion piece for the UK's Sunday Observer newspaper about a teen prepaid Maestro spending card that BlueCorner introduced last week. » Continue Reading
January's Top 11 Most Popular News Stories on Payments News are:
Ron Lieber reports for the Wall St.Journal on the best choices among cash-back credit cards - he particularly likes two Fidelity Investments rewards cards issued by MBNA.
The Payment Card Center (PCC) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has announced a new discussion paper: "How Effective Were the Financial Safety Nets in the Aftermath of Katrina?" (PDF), written by Julia S. Cheney of the PCC and Sherrie L.W. Rhine of the Office of Regional and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. » Continue Reading
RSA Security has announced that Japan Net Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation have selected RSA SecurID strong authentication tokens to better protect online banking customers in Japan. Japan Net Bank will be the first to deliver two-factor authentication tokens to over one million online banking customers.
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Yomirui Shimbun reports on plans by Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. to introduce a service later this year to allow ATM access by customers using mobile phones equipped with contactless chips in lieu of cards - plus the customer's PIN number. The bank says it will remodel about 7,000 ATMs to provide the new service.
American Express has announced the American Express RED Card - currently only available in the UK - that contributes a percentage of purchases on the card to the Global Fund, a leading funder of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
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Expansion Management reports on PayPal's expansion in Omaha, adding a new 125,000 square foot building at its La Vista operations center. » Continue Reading
Richard Burnett of the Orlando Sentinel reports on a debate between some consumer groups and Chase over whether the new contactless technology being used in Chase's new 'blink' cards makes credit card fraud any easier. » Continue Reading
Kim Crompton reports for the Spokane Journal of Business on an accelerating decline in the use and popularity of paper checks. » Continue Reading
Heartland Payment Systems has announced that it is making a strategic investment in Parcxmart Technologies, an electronics payments company. » Continue Reading
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
First Data Corp. has posted the webcast of its investor call earlier today along with the accompanying Investor Presentation.
Betsy McKay reports on the story for the Wall St. Journal.
Reuters reports that Fitch Ratings has lowered FDC's issuer default rating as a result of today's announcement.
Ponemon Institute and Vontu, Inc. have announced the results of their 2006 Privacy Trust Study for Retail Banking concluding that National City and US Bank tied for first place. » Continue Reading
The Federal Trade Commission has announced that ChoicePoint, Inc., which last year acknowledged that the personal financial records of more than 163,000 consumers in its database had been compromised, will pay $10 million in civil penalties and $5 million in consumer redress to settle FTC charges that its security and record-handling procedures violated consumers’ privacy rights and federal laws. » Continue Reading
First Data Corp. has announced that it plans to separate its Western Union consumer payments business into an independent publicly traded company through a tax-free spin-off of 100% of Western Union to First Data shareholders. » Continue Reading
Pay By Touch has announced it has closed more than $60 million in new financing through the sale of Series C Preferred Shares. » Continue Reading
Digital Media Wire is hosting a 1-day executive forum for companies addressing the digital entertainment space on Tuesday, January 31 in New York City. » Continue Reading
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
Bank of America has launched online sales of more than 200 affinity credit cards for certain sports, universities and charities in what is the first major integration of MBNA offerings, the company announced today. » Continue Reading
Visa says it is working with Innovative Card Technologies and nCryptone to offer a new technology that enables Visa payment cards to generate and display a dynamic passcode for one-time use when banking or shopping online.The generated passcode is only accepted once and is useless in subsequent transactions. Visa expects the new display card to be available in select markets later this year.
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Visa International has released the results of new global survey of consumer attitudes concluding that the theft or loss of personal and financial information is the No. 1 concern of consumers worldwide (64 percent). A media backgrounder on the survey results (PDF) is available online. » Continue Reading
The US Department of the Treasury has released results of a new survey that revealed several key misconceptions among US consumers about payment security. » Continue Reading
Experian has announced the launch of Collection Triggers, a collections solution that monitors a company's portfolio of collections accounts and identifies new information indicating the possibility of recovering the debt. » Continue Reading
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
The Board of Directors of Unisys Corporation has elected First Data Corp. Chairman and CEO Henry C. "Ric" Duques as non-executive Chairman effective Feb. 1. Duques has been on the Unisys board since 1998. » Continue Reading
eMarketer.com explores PayPal's latest quarterly results and also reports that, based on a recent SG Cowen report, 91 percent of US online consumers have a PayPal account. » Continue Reading
CheckFree is seeking a VP Payment Management to be based in either Atlanta, GA or Columbus, OH. » Continue Reading
Julie Macintosh reports for Reuters that analysts expect First Data to update its plans regarding restructuring and potential divestiture at its analysts' meeting coming up this Thursday. » Continue Reading
Scott McCartney writes in his Middle Seat column for this morning's Wall St. Journal about rewards cards - the traditional airline mileage variety vs. some of the newer cash-back rewards cards - and concludes that for many travelers, frequent-flier mileage cards may offer the better deal.
In an 8-K filing with the SEC yesterday, MasterCard disclosed the target annual incentive bonus levels for its top five executives as established by the Compensation Committee of its Board of Directors. The company said that these bonus payments for 2006 would be based on the Company’s achievement of a predetermined EBITDA target.
For the second time in as many years, eCommerce merchants named New York City as the riskiest North American metro area for eCommerce. » Continue Reading
Xinhua reports that the People's Bank of China is pushing for wider use of non-cash payments this year to meet the needs of the mainland's developing economy. » Continue Reading
Mary Catherine O'Connor reports for RFID Journal on the implementation of contactless payments at the McDonald's quick service restaurant chain and their recent announcement about also accepting American Express ExpressPay-equipped cards. » Continue Reading
Matthew Boyle reports for Fortune on biometric-based payments and recent research by Sanford Bernstein analyst Emme Kozloff into their potential benefits for major retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco. » Continue Reading
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
3i has announced a $23 million investment in Zurich (Switzerland) based Webpay AG, owner of Click & Buy, an ePayment and storefront provider for online and mobile digital content.
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American Express today reported financial results for the fourth quarter of 2005 that included a 13 percent increase in net income for its US card services business on a 14 percent increase in revenues. » Continue Reading
Joseph A. Giannone reports for Reuters on the retailer class action lawsuits pending in the US against the major credit card associations and card issuing banks. » Continue Reading
Steven Van Fleet has been named President and CEO of RewardsNOW, a financial services loyalty marketing company. He has been a senior vice president with RewardsNOW since October 2005. » Continue Reading
TowerGroup has released new research concluding that, while futurists have spun predictions of a "cashless" society since the middle of the last century, momentum is gathering that may turn this vision into reality in as little as 10 years. The report says that a combination of market- ready and emerging technologies is aligning to drive a majority of consumer payment transactions from cash toward other payments "form factors" - including the Internet, mobile and contactless payments. » Continue Reading
Dave Segal reports for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on Bank of Hawaii's announcement over the weekend that it would partner with Bank of America's MBNA to make available both Visa and American Express cards to its customers. » Continue Reading
The China Stock Blog highlights some comments from last week's TSYS earnings conference call by CEO Phil Tomlinson and CFO James Lipham about TSYS' entry into the bank card market in China through its investment in China UnionPay. » Continue Reading
Based upon a research finding that consumer confidence in online banking is fragile, the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA) has announced that its Financial Risk Outlook 2006, to be published on Wednesday, will encourage banks to further engage consumers in their fight to combat the rise in online banking fraud.
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Theresa Howard reports for USA Today on an upcoming shift in Visa USA's advertising scheduled to begin during the Winter Olympic Games - following Visa's switch last year from advertising agency BBDO to TBWA/Chiat/Day. » Continue Reading
The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association is now the official name of the trade organization recently formed to represent the common interests of the many participants in the new and emerging branded prepaid card industry. The name replaces the "Branded Prepaid Card Association," the working name used to identify the group until a broad cross-section of industry participants could be consulted. » Continue Reading
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
John Engen writes for Bank Technology News about "natural selection" and the four public online banking technology vendors left standing after the dust from the dot.com craze settled -- Corillian, Digital Insight, Online Resources, S1 - and their combined less than $2 billion market cap. » Continue Reading
EmigrantDirect has launched a new "AmericanDream Credit Card" that's a MasterCard issued by Juniper (Barclays) Bank.
Technorati Tags: EmigrantDirect
» Continue ReadingForrester's Sucharita Mulpuru has a new report out (fee) on US eCommerce reporting that online ecommerce retail sales for 2005 came in at about $165 billion, a 20% lift over 2004. » Continue Reading
Bank of Hawaii Corporation and MBNA America Bank, N.A. have announced the signing of a joint marketing agreement under which Bank of Hawaii will offer Visa and American Express credit cards to consumers and Visa credit cards to businesses. » Continue Reading
Anusha Shrivastava reports for the Waterbury, CT Republican American on concerns being raised by Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal about surcharges that utilities are charging customers who pay their utility bills by credit card. » Continue Reading
Candace Heckman reports for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on numerous reports from Bank of America customers of checking account fraud in Seattle and elsewhere in which ATM cash withdrawals and purchases are occuring overseas. » Continue Reading
The New Zealand Banking Business Review reports on comments by Visa's New Zealand head Ian Jamieson that smart card rollouts will accelerate in 2006. » Continue Reading
Michael Arrington has profiled the new "social money" startup BillMonk over on his TechCrunch blog. See also our earlier post about BillMonk.
Technorati Tags: BillMonk, TechCrunch
Jennifer Hill reports for The Scotsman on the increasing removal of cashback rewards credit cards from the UK market. » Continue Reading
Robin Arnfield writes for Newsfactor Online about the safety of online banking and the range of efforts being taken by financial institutions to better secure their systems against attacks. » Continue Reading
Citigroup has reported financial results for the fourth quarter of 2005 with Citi's US Card business reporting revenues declining 7 percent prior to applying an additional accounting charge (related to customer reward programs) that further reduced its reported revenues. » Continue Reading
People's Daily Online reports on a MasterCard survey of Chinese consumers which concludes the Chinese are highly optimistic about their future, with "confidence in their life quality and income."
Note: Throughout the day, as Payments News happens, this post is updated.
Ashley Seager reports for the UK's Guardian that the