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Mc Nelly Torres reports for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on the increasingly promoted gasoline rebate credit cards -- but that often come with higher interest rates on any revolving balances on the cards.
Kelly Spors reports for the Wall St. Journal on how slip-ups on financial matters as a young person can have financial consequences that last a long time by impacting the person's credit score.
In an article titled 'Get merchants to lust after credit and debit card acceptance!", Aneace Haddad writes on his blog about how merchants feel about credit and debit card acceptance - and "why merchants and regulators are fighting interchange fees so fiercely." His "worst case scenario" is pretty dark for the card industry: "merchants win their antitrust lawsuit, banks lose $100 billion, interchange revenue is eliminated and banks have to pay merchants to accept cards."
Another point of view might be that all of those credit losses that card issuers suffer consist of sales actually made by merchants. One can argue that US card accepting merchants' top line sales revenues are about five percent higher than they otherwise might be - after all, that's roughly the level of credit losses currently being absorbed by credit card issuers.
Connie Mabin writes for the Associated Press about bank debit card reward programs being put in place at a growing number of banks. » Continue Reading
Visa USA has announced the election of its first four independent members of its board of directors: Philip D. DeFeo, Linda Baker Keene, Jon C. Madonna and John A. Swainson. » Continue Reading
Mercator Advisory Group has released a new report titled "The Online Opportunity for PIN-Based and "PIN-Less" Debit" that discusses market opportunities to expand usage of PIN-based debit cards in the online environment. » Continue Reading
David Steiner writes for AuctionBytes about his first impressions as a shopper on eBay's new eBay Express fixed price shopping portal - he calls it "eBeX". HIs big learning - watch out for shipping costs from eBeX sellers - especially when comparing prices before checkout to those on Amazon.com where shipping on orders over $25 is free.
Cliff D'Arcy writes for Motley Fool UK about how some card issuers, notably MBNA, have introduced a new approach to reducing the minimum payment amount due on outstanding balances - which he calls "the most evil and disturbing card trick that I've ever seen in almost two decades in financial services." Credit card issuers in the US were recently nudged to address the minimum payment amount due issue by federal regulators.
Andrea Coombes writes for MarketWatch about the record number of mailed credit card solicitations - over 6 billion - mailed by US credit card issuers in 2005, up 16 percent over 2004 according to a new report by Synovate. That works out to an average of six offers per household per month. » Continue Reading
Card Technology reports on plans by South Korea’s major mobile operators - led by SK Telecom and KTF - to roll out contactless payment to their subscribers. » Continue Reading
Yukako Ono writes for Japan's Asahi.com about NTT DoCoMo's new DCMX contactless mobile payment service phones containing Sony Corp.'s Felica contactless IC chip. » Continue Reading
David Kaplan profiles PreCash CEO John Chaney for the Houston Chronicle. PreCash is a Houston-based company that offers a variety of payment options serving immigrants and other consumers who do not have bank accounts. » Continue Reading
MasterCard International has announced that it has named Walter M. Macnee President of the Americas, effective May 15, succeeding Ruth Ann Marshall. » Continue Reading
The Toronto Star reports on increasing concerns by consumer groups in Canada about the error rate associated with pre-authorized debits against consumer checking accounts - citing more than 1,000 erroneous postings each day to consumer accounts. » Continue Reading
Peralte Paul reports for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about a recent deal between card processor TSYS and Exante Financial Serfvices, the banking unit of United Health Group. » Continue Reading
American Express has announced the American Express Benefits Plus Card, a new healthcare payment product that provides access to cardholder healthcare flexible spending accounts (FSA). In addition, American Express announced separate agreements with PayFlex and WageWorks, leading consumer-driven tax-advantaged spending account administrators, to offer the Benefits Plus Card to corporations and their employees. » Continue Reading
First Data Corp. has announced a multi-year agreement to provide global merchant processing to Microsoft for global online consumer and business clients of Microsoft. » Continue Reading
David Breitkopf and Isabelle Lindenmayer report in this morning's American Banker on proposed changes to the Visa USA board of directors - to be voted on tomorrow - including the addition of four independent non-bank board members. Last November, Visa USA had announced it would be adding eight independent directors and today's article says Visa continues to interview candidates for the four remaining director seats.
Ruth Simon of the Wall St. Journal takes a comprehensive look at the current state of home equity lending and what some banks are doing to keep their home equity lending business growing with promotions, special deals, etc. in the face of higher interest rates. This has become a big business for banks as "balances on home-equity lines of credit have climbed 71% to $543.2 billion over the last two years."
Visa International, in collaboration with Maybank, Maxis Communications Berhad (Maxis) and Nokia, has launched its first Mobile Visa Wave Payment Pilot in Malaysia. Two hundred participants who are both Maybankard Visa cardholders and Maxis mobile phone subscribers will participate in the four-month trial beginning today. » Continue Reading
Robert Scott, Editor, Accounting Technology, reflects back on the heyday of account aggregation and wonders whether enough time has passed that it's beginning to come around again. He notes that Intuit is looking for a Vice President & Business Leader for its Financial Institution Group - "whose responsibilities will include Customer Central, the former TekPortal, a data aggregation technology that Intuit acquired in August."
The Reserve Bank of Australia has finalized new reforms it will be imposing on the debit card systems in Australia, significantly reducing fees paid by banks to merchants for EFTPOS transactions (Australia has "reverse interchange" in that scheme), significantly reducing interchange paid to bank issuers on Visa Debit transactions, forcing Visa to amend its rules for Visa Debit acceptance to allow merchants to accept Visa Credit cards but not Visa Debit cards and allowing merchants to surcharge Visa Debit transactions. » Continue Reading
Katy Matlock reports for Baylor's Lariat Online on college students and credit cards. According to Matlock, Dr. Franklin Potts, associate professor of finance at Baylor, describes credit card issuers as having "several sneaky ways to catch consumers". » Continue Reading
Mark Calvey writes for the San Francisco Business Times about Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis' repeated recent comments that the bank is considering the possibility of leaving Visa and creating its own credit card network. » Continue Reading
Michael Merritt, Deputy Assistant Director of the Office of Investigations for the United States Secret Service testified yesterday before the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs in the US Senate. Merritt's prepared testimony (PDF) described the history of the so-called "Supernotes", high-quality counterfeit U.S. currency (Federal Reserve Notes) and the connections the Secret Service has made between the production and distribution of these counterfeit notes and the government of North Korea. » Continue Reading
The Palo Alto Weekly's Bill D'Agostino reports on Menlo Park-based MyTango.com's new remote order and pay service that has recently gone live in several Midpeninsula restaurants, bars and coffee shops. » Continue Reading
Glenbrook's Russ Jones comments on the release a few weeks ago by six federal agencies (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Trade Commission, National Credit Union Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission) of a new report titled "Evolution of a Prototype Financial Privacy Notice" (pdf). » Continue Reading
First Data Corp. has announced its Strategic Communications Solution (SCS), a suite of products designed to help card issuers increase loyalty and usage among their cardholder database. » Continue Reading
Mylene Mangalindan and Jessica E. Vascellaro of the Wall St. Journal review the new mobile payment services from PayPal Mobile, Obopay, and TextPayMe. Earlier this month, we posted the Payments News US Mobile Payments Players - Comparisons chart that also outlines the most important similarities and differences between these three mobile payments services.
The People's Daily Online reports on the rapid development of bank cards in China based upon comments made by Su Ning, Vice President of the People's Bank of China, at a press conference earlier this week. » Continue Reading
Valerie Bauerlein reports for the Wall St. Journal on comments by Bank of America's CEO Ken Lewis that "he may be interested in starting a credit-card processing network and a new brand of card to compete with Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express."
Tim Johnson reports from Tokyo for the Knight Ridder Newspapers about mobile phones and payments. "Japanese consumers can purchase from vending machines, buy train tickets, order a bowl of noodles, trade stock, bid at online auctions and change channels on a TV set."
TowerGroup says that self-service banking is alive and well in the United States and finds that self-service banking will undergo an explosion in both quantity and quality, relative to the kinds of transactions that consumers can perform unaided by bank staff. TowerGroup estimates that by 2010, retail banking customers in the U.S. will conduct nearly 60 billion self-service transactions every year -- an increase of nearly 50% over self-service transaction volumes forecasted for 2006. » Continue Reading
Umpqua Bank has introduced Discover Local Music, a music-on-demand project and online music store, at http://www.umpquamusic.com. Umpqua's Discover Local Music project identifies high-quality independent musicians throughout the West Coast and makes their music available online and in Umpqua's 96 bank branch "stores". » Continue Reading
Zhang Fengming reports for the Shanghai Daily that policy makers in China at the country's central bank are considering "preferential tax plans to boost its bank card-based consumption". » Continue Reading
Jane Kim reports for the Wall St. Journal on the launch of UBS-branded American Express and Visa Signature credit cards (issued by Barclay's Juniper Bank) along with a rewards program for brokerage customers fulfilled via the cards.
In a column titled "Cash preferable to credit for kids", the Washington Post's Michelle Singletary writes about her views on why credit cards (including prepaid cards) are just bad news for kids and teens. » Continue Reading
Yesterday, we announced the first Payments News reader survey on the topic of mobile payments / mobile banking. We've had a tremendous response to the survey in the short time that it's been available online. Read on for some early and interesting "survey exit poll" results! » Continue Reading
eBay has announced the preview of eBay Express, "a new website found within the eBay marketplace that provides U.S. shoppers an easy way to find new items at fixed prices from qualified eBay merchants." To qualify as an eBay Express merchant, the seller must accept PayPal and have a history of selling successfully on eBay. » Continue Reading
Angela Delli Santi reports for the Associated Press on new legislation introduced by New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez that would "strengthen consumer protections against zealous marketing practices and abuses by credit card companies" who he says will issue credit cards to "anyone with a pulse and a social security number". Read on for the full text of the press release issued by his office on his "Credit Card Bill of Rights". » Continue Reading
Washington Mutual is promoting its new free outgoing wire transfers to LA's Latino community. WaMu says it is "making the process of wiring money more affordable by introducing the new WaMu Free Checking account, which offers free foreign and domestic outgoing wire transfers." » Continue Reading
BB&T has announced that its OnSite Deposit service has processed more than $1 billion in checks since the image-based service was introduced in March 2005. » Continue Reading
Yodlee and Corillian have announced a partnership to ensure support of Yodlee's aggregation-powered financial applications with Corillian's multi-factor authentication solution, Intelligent Authentication. » Continue Reading
American Express reported first quarter financial results today that included 16 percent year over year growth in payment volume and a 10 percent growth in cards issued. Amex's average merchant discount rate declined from 2.61% in 1Q05 to 2.58% in 1Q06 while average spending on its proprietary (non-bank partner) cards increased 8 percent year over year.
Cyphermint has announced a new mobile commerce platform called PayCash Mobile. » Continue Reading
Robert Jaques reports for vnunet.com about the resurgence in interest around mobile commerce and payments as discussed in a recent In-Stat research study.
As a reminder, Payments News is conducting a reader survey of attitudes about Mobile Payments and Mobile Banking. Click here to participate in the Payments News survey.
RSA Security has announced that it has acquired PassMark Security, a privately held company based in Menlo Park, that "delivers robust software-based authentication to millions of users worldwide, through some of the largest consumer-facing financial institutions." » Continue Reading
Patrick L. Thimangu writes for the St. Louis Business Journal about MasterCard's Global Technology and Operations headquarters in O'Fallon, Mo. being one of the best places to work in the St. Louis area.
Last week, Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg attended the Electronic Transaction Association's annual meeting in Las Vegas and, among all of the usual convention floor exhibits, one new company struck his fancy: SellitSAFE. Read Allen's commentary on the company. » Continue Reading
We've just opened a new survey for Payments News readers focusing on mobile payments and mobile banking. We're asking you to respond from two points of view: first, as a consumer yourself and, second, as a payments professional. As always, we'll be sharing results from the survey here in future articles on Payments News. Click here to take the survey
On Thursday, First Data Corp. reported financial results for the first quarter. A replay of the conference call held by management is available through this Friday on the FDC site. The Seeking Alpha blog has posted a transcript of the call that makes for interesting reading.
Kyodo News reports that Intel has invested 5 billion yen (about $42 Million) into Japan's BitWallet, provider of the Felica-based Edy electronic money service. » Continue Reading
Reuters reports from China on comments by Citigroup's China chief, Richard Stanley, that the "lessons Citi learned from a credit card boom that turned to bust in South Korea will be invaluable as China learns to love plastic money." » Continue Reading
Jolayne Houtz writes for the Seattle Times about the use of credit cards by high school teens. » Continue Reading
M.P. Dunleavey writes for the New York Times about receiving a solicitation for a J. P. Morgan Chase EquityCard, a credit card that allows you to spend the equity in your home. » Continue Reading
ATMmarketplace.com reports on a speech given last week by Stuart Weiner, Vice President and Director of Payments System Research at the Kansas City Fed, in which he acknowledged that the Fed has been asked by various groups to referee the ongoing battle over interchange fees - but, he said, the Fed would only intervene if a crisis or other emergency arises.
Automatic Merchandiser reports on eSecure Peripherals, a Montreal, Canada-based cashless payment provider and their PayPal Payment Module for networked cashless payment terminals. » Continue Reading
Richard Burnett reports for the Orlando Sentinel about "the biggest cyber-heist of customer debit-card numbers to date." » Continue Reading
Mylene Mangalindan and Robert Guth write in a front page story in this morning's Wall St. Journal about the dancing underway among the major Internet giants (eBay, Yahoo!, and Microsoft) as they try to figure out what to do about Google - and whether new partnerships (or not) would change anything.
MasterCard has announced it has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking an injunction against the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the governing body of the FIFA World Cup, to prevent FIFA from moving forward with an agreement with Visa International to sponsor the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups. » Continue Reading
Yahoo! has been issued US Patent No. 7,031,939 for "systems and methods for implementing person-to-person money exchange" based upon a filing dated August 15, 2000. » Continue Reading
A few days ago, Rob Walker wrote a story for the New York Times about the Jimi Wallet - "the wallet for people who hate wallets" (and who doesn't!). » Continue Reading
Zhand Ferming reports for ShanghaiDaily.com about a failure in the city's bank card processing system at China Unionpay that led to major outage. Ferming reported: "Bank cards, which are used as a convenient payment channel in daily consumption, has lost its luster amid such a system break-down."
Digital Transactions reports on Visa USA CEO John Philip Coghlan's keynote address to this week's Electronic Transaction Association annual meeting in Las Vegas. » Continue Reading
eBay reported first quarter 2006 financial results yesterday including impressive results for its PayPal business that reported revenues up 44% and payment volume up 41% year-over-year. » Continue Reading
The Federal Reserve Board has announced the consolidation of two internal advisory committees on payments system matters, the Payments System Policy Advisory Committee and the Payments System Development Committee. » Continue Reading
JP Morgan Chase reported first quarter financial results this morning. The dynamics reported in its card business this quarter include revenue essentially flat but net income up substantially - 73 percent - over the prior year due primarily to lower bankruptcy-related credit losses. As with some other issuers this quarter, Chase reported a 5.6 percent decline in its outstanding loans over the prior quarter as consumers paid off balances at an accelerated rate - at least partially due to changes in the minimum payment amount due on outstanding balances.
The Merchant Risk Council has announced the results of its fifth annual survey of merchants reporting that online fraud rates for merchants surveyed are now similar to the fraud rates of brick-and-mortar stores and that fraud spikes and fraudsters' use of increasingly sophisticated schemes are keeping retailers on alert. » Continue Reading
"Bank Where You Slurp" is Citi's new slogan for its recently announced deal with 7-Eleven providing ATM access for Citi's banking customers. Check out Citibank.com's My Citi home page.
APACS has announced figures for retail spending in 2005 that show debit card spending in retail outlets exceeded cash spending for the first time ever last year. » Continue Reading
Bankrate has announced that the average bounced check fee is $27.04 - an increase of 25%, since Bankrate's first checking study was released in the fall of 1998. The research compiled in Bankrate's Spring 2006 Checking Study shows several significant trends in bounced check fees, ATM surcharges and interest-bearing checking accounts. » Continue Reading
Reuters reports on comments by Albert Shiung, Visa's country manager for China, suggesting that the number of Visa cards in China should grow 70 to 80 percent this year. "I think double digit (growth) for the next five years is not a problem," according to Shiung.
Valerie Bauerlein reports for the Wall St. Journal on what analysts will be looking for in Thursday's first quarter financial report coming from Capital One - which will be the first full quarter of results including Hibernia Corp. since its acquisition last fall.
In an article titled 'Will Zopa's P2P loans mean the death of the bank manager?", Tony Hallett writes from the UK for Silicon.com about Zopa's person to person lending services.