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The New York Times reports that "Citigroup has agreed to buy Ecount, a privately held provider of prepaid cards, expanding its presence in the fastest-growing part of the payment industry, according to bank officials." According to the Times, the official announcement is expected to be made tomorrow.
Visa USA has announced an agreement with 7-Eleven to "introduce Visa ReadyLink, Visa's prepaid load network, to its U.S. convenience stores. 7-Eleven, the world's largest convenience store chain and one of the nation's largest independent gasoline retailers, will work with its Visa member acquiring financial institution to implement the service. This service will allow consumers to add funds to eligible Visa reloadable prepaid cards at the nearly 5,350 stores that 7-Eleven operates and franchises in the contiguous U.S." » Continue Reading
MasterCard's 10-K annual report for 2006 was filed today with the SEC and is available online. Included were various exhibits including updated Bylaws, as well as copies of amended business agreements with HSBC and Bank of America (both redacted to remove confidential financial information).
In a post titled "Pincer Movement" on the Digital Money Blog, Dave Birch writes about the recent story we posted here on Payments News earlier this week about NTT DoCoMo and McDonald's getting together for contactless mobile payments in Japan.
Dave asks "isn't this a nightmare come true for the payments guys in banks? The retailers and the mobile phone operators getting together to provide a new solution to a problem that is not central to either of them but as a byproduct of achieving some other goals -- perhaps customer intimacy or reduced churn -- and chips away at legacy payment systems provided by banks..."
PayPal's Online Merchant Network is holding a webinar on March 7th beginning at 10 AM Pacific time on the topic of alternative payments. According to the announcement, "Jim Hunt, Director of Merchant Relations for PayPal, identifies the pros and cons of the available forms of alternative payment methods and what to consider when choosing which to implement. In addition, a panel of current mid-sized PayPal merchants will be available to give their perspective and answer questions."
Prepaid Media has announced the winners of the 2007 Prepaid Card Awards - naming Blackhawk Network as the Most Innovative Product or Service. Other award winners include the Wal-Mart Prepaid Visa, Brinker International for its payroll card program, and the American Red Cross for its disaster relief card program.
The PULSE EFT Association has announced results of its 2007 Debit Issuer Study - concluding that "U.S. debit card-issuing financial institutions experienced debit card transaction growth of 18 percent in 2006 and expect continued strong growth in 2007." » Continue Reading
Citi has announced an agreement with Obopay to pilot an "innovative, real-time Person-to-Person mobile payments service later this year. The service will be offered to new and existing Citi credit and debit card customers. Further details, including cities for the consumer pilot, are to be confirmed and announced at a later time." » Continue Reading
Digital Transactions reports on changes MasterCard is making to its interchange rates effective April 1, 2007 - saying that "Internet retailers will see their acceptance costs decline for some MasterCard credit card transactions but rise for others." MasterCard's full interchange rate tables are available online.
Heartland Payment Systems has announced that forty-six state associations now support its "Merchant Bill of Rights, a major initiative to help owners of small and mid-sized businesses manage the cost and complexity of credit and debit card acceptance." » Continue Reading
US Bank's Elan Financial Services has announced it has partnered with Sapphire Mobile Systems to conduct a mobile banking and payments pilot, integrating with the Phire Mobile Debit Network to provide customers with "highly secure, instant access to their PayCard accounts via any mobile handset." » Continue Reading
The Stop & Shop Supermarket Company issued a press release late today updating news of an earlier suspected security breach: "On Monday night, associates in our Coventry, Rhode Island, Stop & Shop noticed suspicious activity at the front of the store near our cash registers. Our associates called the Coventry Police, who responded immediately and arrested four individuals." » Continue Reading
Jessica Anderson writes for Kiplinger.com about being a person-to-person lender on Prosper.com - saying it "offers financial rewards with a dose of good karma."
Bankrate.com reports on news out of the UK that Lloyds TSB plans to begin charging cardholders fees of £35 per year if they don't use their credit cards often enough. More details about the plan are available in this BBC story.
Aliaswire has announced the general availability of PayVox, a "Voice-Activated Bill Payment solution that has been designed exclusively for the prepaid card industry. Using just a prepaid debit card, PayVox allows users to pay bills over the phone or the web in a manner previously only available to on-line banking bill-pay customers." » Continue Reading
Visa USA has announced that nearly twenty issuers, partners, processors and acquiring financial institutions have agreed to implement Visa ReadyLink, Visa’s prepaid load network service. Visa recently announced an agreement with Blackhawk Network’s alliance partner stores, making Safeway the first in Blackhawk Network’s alliance of 60,000 stores in North America to implement Visa ReadyLink. » Continue Reading
The European Financial Management & Marketing Association has announced a conference titled "Trust in Online Finance - Creating Safe and Trusted Online Offerings" to be held in Brussels on Thursday-Friday, April 26-27. » Continue Reading
comScore Networks has released the results of a study analyzing usage of online bill payment services at leading banks - "defined as paying a bill online from a checking, savings, or money market account using the functionality in the bill pay portion of the bank's Web site and where the recipient of the money is not the bank itself. According to the study, among those consumers who had one or more checking, savings, or money market accounts and who used online bank bill pay during the quarter with a leading financial institution Bank of America achieved 65 percent penetration in Q4 2006. Wells Fargo ranked second in penetration of online bill payers, with a level of 18 percent, followed by Chase and Wachovia (each achieved 13 percent penetration)." » Continue Reading
Bank of America is webcasting the second day of its annual investor conference today. Yesterday's webcast is also available for viewing online.
A presentation by Barbara Desoer, Chief Technology & Operations Officer, titled "Payments: The Opportunity" is particularly of interest to payments professionals - she notes that "payments drive more revenue for banks than any other business." Additional presentations from the conference are available online.
Glenbrook's next Payments Boot Camp, scheduled for Atlanta, Georgia on March 13 and 14, has only a few open seats remaining. Carol Coye Benson and Scott Loftesness will be teaching this session. If you're interested in attending this boot camp in Atlanta, please be sure to register now as we're just about sold out.
Glenbrook's Merchants Payments Boot Camp, specifically tailored for retailers, ecommerce merchants, etc. is being held March 21 and 22 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Allen Weinberg, Russ Jones and Jay DeWitt will be teaching this session. Registration is available online.
For answers to any questions about Glenbrook's Payments Boot Camps, you can contact us at bootcamp@glenbrook.com.
Damon Williams has posted about his new book for PayPal developers titled "Pro PayPal E-Commerce." Williams says he's "pulled together just about all of the different options that PayPal offers to web developers, and included lots of sample code and best practices for developing your website or application."
You'll find more books specially selected for payments professionals at the Payments News Store.
Capital One has announced the No Hassle Cash Rewards credit card that "offers (one percent) cash back on purchases without the complicated requirements, confusing language and frustrating expiration periods of other cash back rewards programs." » Continue Reading
NetBanker's Jim Bruene has announced the publication of new research titled "Mobile Banking & Payments 2.0" - saying that "after three months of looking at mobile banking, talking to more players, and trying to develop a reasonable forecast, we have tempered our initial enthusiasm a bit. While we remain optimistic that the mobile channel will someday eclipse desktop online banking ... in North America mobile banking is NOT a new channel, but rather an extension of existing sales and service channels." The report is available for $495 or included with a subscription to Online Banking Report.
The Federal Reserve System’s Payments System Policy Advisory Committee has published a summary of results from a forum on "Transforming U.S. Retail Payments" that was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on November 2, 2006 to discuss payments system developments and barriers to innovation with the payments industry and relevant payments system participants. "During the forum, industry experts representing depository institutions, payment processors, and nonfinancial corporations provided a variety of perspectives on strategic issues and opportunities associated with the changing U.S. retail payments system."
The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) has announced its annual conference and general meeting will be held in Dallas on May 16-17. On May 15, the FSTC will he holding a Mobile Payments Workshop - also in Dallas.
Over on The Bankwatch blog, Colin Henderson takes a look at Huntington Bank's new DirectHuntington high rate online savings account initiative. Huntington announced DirectHuntington earlier today - offering a 5.3% APY.
According to Comdata, "gift cards make holiday shopping quick, while gift card malls make it painless." A recent survey by the company shows consumers hit gift card malls in a big way this past holiday season. Results of a national web survey of adults conducted in February revealed that 22 percent of adults purchased cards at a gift card mall this year, up from 14 percent in 2006. » Continue Reading
Retail Expansion Network has announced PaidByCash - described as "a new coast-to-coast cash network that allows any online retailer and any online shopper to complete a cash transaction over the Internet. PaidByCash is a Virtual MasterCard product accepted by nearly every online retailer. With a nationwide network of 60,000 neighborhood retail outlets where consumers can convert cash into an online payment instrument, PaidByCash has opened a new market for the national online retail economy." » Continue Reading
The Center for Financial Services Innovation has published a white paper titled "Cardholder Use of General Spending Prepaid Cards: A Closer Look at the Market" (PDF) written by Sherrie L. W. Rhine, Katy Jacob, Yazmin Osaki, and Jennifer Tescher. From the executive summary: "To gain a clearer understanding of the transaction behavior of cardholders, CFSI explored trends in the general spending prepaid card market as understood from four card providers that participated in this study. With transaction data provided by the participants on a total of nearly 2,000 cardholders, this study seeks to define how consumers use branded general spending cards."
The Center for Financial Services Innovation has published a new white paper titled "Card-Based Remittances; A Closer Look at Supply and Demand" (PDF) written by Manuel Orozco, Katy Jacob and Jennifer Tescher. From the executive summary: "This report presents the results of an analysis of the supply and demand for card-based transfers among migrants. We analyze a nationwide study of Latin American and Caribbean migrant remittance senders and their access and use of card products of all kinds. Coupled with extensive interviews with card-based remittance providers, this analysis allows us to investigate the relationship between the supply for card-based remittances and remittance senders’ demands for financial products."
We have received news of the following recent management changes:
Reuters reports that NTT DoCoMo and McDonald's have announced they will be forming a new joint venture company to facilitate acceptance of mobile payments at McDonald's locations in Japan.
EMVCo, the EMV chip card standards body jointly owned by JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International, has announced its launch of a Card Type Approval process for Common Core Definitions (CCD) and Common Payment Application (CPA) compliant cards. » Continue Reading
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), American Bankers Association (ABA) and the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) have announced joint sponsorship of the inaugural Counter-eCrime Operations Summit (CeCOS), "a conference for counter-ecrime stakeholders focusing on the management of electronic crime events and the work of the professionals charged with engaging these increasingly threatening and costly incidents." » Continue Reading
Following earlier press reports that it was about to do so, Citi has officially announced that "Gary Crittenden, formerly Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and head of Global Network Services at American Express, will become its Chief Financial Officer. He will report directly to Charles Prince, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, effective March 12, 2007." » Continue Reading
Zhang Fengming reports for ShanghaiDaily.com on the increasing volumes of bank card transactions in China as reported by China Unionpay, the country's sole bank card transaction system operator.
Eric Dash reports for the New York Times that Citigroup is expected shortly to name Gary Crittenden, currently CFO of American Express, as CFO of Citigroup.
Damon Darlin interviews Intuit CEO Steve Bennett who says Intuit's "vision is our online software as a service suite that integrates all the data flow that makes it one place for small business to do online banking, bill payment and customer management."
Damon Darlin writes for the New York Times about efforts to try to get Social Security numbers removed from web sites, etc. “The problem is every dentist’s office has Social Security numbers. Every doctor’s office has them. How secure are these?”
As part of our preparation for Glenbrook's next Payments Boot Camp (being held in Atlanta March 13-14), we've been doing a update to our mobile banking and payments module - including adding a deeper dive into Visa's new Mobile Platform initiative. » Continue Reading
Edgar, Dunn & Company and Mobile Payments World have announced the results of the 2007 Mobile Financial Services Study (PDF) they conducted into attitudes about mobile financial services - including mobile banking and mobile payments. Almost 500 individuals participated in the survey producing some most interesting results. » Continue Reading
Meena Thiruvengadam writes for the San Antonio Express-News about the merger announced in December of M&F Worldwide Corp., the parent company of San Antonio-based Clarke American, the nation's No. 3 check printer, with Atlanta-based John H. Harland Co., the country's No. 2 check printer, to become the largest check printing company in the US - larger than long-time No. 1 Deluxe Corp. The merger is still awaiting regulatory approvals.
Brian Mark asks himself what is it that Google is getting out of offering Checkout for free - and proceeds to answer his own question by realizing that, as people register to participate in Checkout, Google then "actually knows where those people live. That’s right, your credit card billing address gets verified when you add it as a payment option. So now they know where you live, which helps them better target local search results and really tailor personalized search for you."
In an article titled ING Direct Makes Checking (Almost) Fun Again, NetBanker's Jim Bruene reviews in detail the cool features of ING Direct's Electric Orange checking account - and critiques their decision to not provide an in-hand paper check option for customers and suggests they need to get with it and offer remote deposit capture capability as well.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has released a new Study of Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice (PDF) based on a survey of payment behavior and attitudes taken by Federal Reserve employees in 2004. The authors include Marques Benton, Krista Blair, Marianne Crowe, and Scott Schuh. Among the findings: "Cost, convenience, and timing are the three most important fundamental characteristics that determine respondents’ adoption and use of all payment methods. Safety and privacy also are important for methods more susceptible to consequences like identity theft that are costly to consumers." » Continue Reading
Krista Becker, Emerging Payments Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has published a new industry briefing paper titled "Mobile Phone: The New Way to Pay?" (PDF) that contains some great background and thinking about the issues and opportunities around mobile payments.
Bank of America Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis has published an op-ed titled "Not in the Cards" in this morning's Wall St. Journal explaining more about the bank's pilot program to issue secured credit cards to immigrants in the Los Angeles area. After explaining the bank's rationale for offering the cards - including noting that that pilot is a "new promotion of a secured credit card product that has been available for years", Lewis says that "after a week of listening to our customers, we have made a decision. We will continue our card marketing pilot program in the Los Angeles market."
Joseph Pereira writes for the Wall St. Journal about new legislation sponsored by Masschusetts State Rep. Michael A. Costello "that would require retailers to pay for losses when hackers and thieves breach their security systems to steal consumers' credit-card and other financial information." The bill would require that merchants would, in addition to bearing responsibility for notification to affected consumers, be responsible for all card issuer expenses associated with re-issuance of cards, providing identity theft protection to consumers, and be fully responsible for any fraud losses that occur on cards involved in a merchant data breach incident. Pereira notes that merchants are opposing the bill - saying "that they already are paying dearly for potential fraud through what's known as an interchange fee."
Bank of America has announced the theme of its new brand positioning: "Bank of Opportunity." The bank said that its new brand positioning is being supported by the its largest advertising campaign to date scheduled to debut during ABC's telecast of the 79th Academy Awards. The bank said its new positioning "reflects Bank of America's unique role in helping individuals, businesses and communities around the world realize opportunities to achieve their goals." » Continue Reading
Carrick Mollenkamp of the Wall St. Journal profiles ex-Wells Fargo banker Terri Dial's work as the head of retail banking at Lloyds TSB in the UK. "Her goal: Emulate U.S. banking practices in an effort to boost a stagnant bottom line and fend off bigger rivals seizing market share."
First Data Corp. has announced that "upon completion of the strategic review of its Official Check and Money Order operation (the "Business") the company has decided to gradually exit this line of business. Most of the Business will be terminated over a period of two to three years. The Business wind-down is expected to free up between $250-$300 million in cash for alternative uses including acquisitions, share repurchases or other corporate purposes during 2007. This cash is currently used in the operation of the Business." » Continue Reading
Dawn Kehr of Source Technologies writes about how kiosks and other interactive technologies are becoming popular among consumers - citing, among others, a gift card kiosk deployed by Build-A-Bear Workshop last holiday season.
In an article in this morning's Wall St. Journal titled "Mobile Banking Shifts Into Higher Gear," Jane Kim reports on the resurgence in interest among major banks in offering mobile banking services. Kim quotes Celent analyst Dan Schatt who "says he expects that by the end of this year, 10% of people who currently bank online will use mobile banking." Kim also notes that some consumers think mobile payments when they hear about mobile banking - and are disappointed when mobile payments isn't part of a bank's mobile service offering.
The TJX Companies has issued a press release (PDF) that includes its updated findings from the company's "ongoing investigation of its previously announced unauthorized intrusion into its computer systems." The release provides more details about the nature and time frames of the data breach. » Continue Reading
Visa and JCB have announced an agreement to share Visa Asia Pacific's contactless specification, which JCB says will soon open up the acceptance of JCB's contactless cards, J/Speedy, at merchant locations outside of Japan. With this arrangement, merchants can use the same terminal to accept contactless payments for both brands. » Continue Reading
This doesn't have anything immediately to do with payments - but it's potentially relevant and interesting nonetheless. Kwikset has introduced SmartScan, what the company calls "the world’s first residential biometric keyless entry system." » Continue Reading
comScore Networks has released the results of a study examining the share of the online High Yield Savings market among key players and the impact of recent rate changes on this marketplace. According to comScore, "the market for high yield savings accounts has become increasingly competitive during the past year, as evidenced by the emergence of new players and subsequent marketplace fragmentation. While ING Direct held a commanding share of new online savings account application submissions in Q4 2005 (53 percent), its share dropped to 25 percent during the same time period in 2006. Meanwhile, newer players like Citibank and Washington Mutual, which each held a negligible share of the market in Q4 2005, increased their share to 19 percent and 17 percent, respectively by Q4 2006." » Continue Reading
PlasticEconomy.com is tracking the consumer credit card debt of a number of consumers who have signed up for their service and who periodically provide their outstanding balance, minimum payment amount, interest rate, and due date for the credit cards they hold. Among other things, they report on the level of household credit card debt and the average APRs charged on a state by state basis. As of this morning, this data is based on information totaling almost $2 million in credit card debt.
Obopay has announced a new Sponsored Accounts feature that the company says "allows anyone under 18 to benefit from the fun, convenience and security of sending and receiving money in real time via the mobile phone. Through this new family enhancement, parents can provide each child with an Obopay account linked to his or her own mobile phone. With Obopay, kids can now enjoy the freedom of spending cash in a cool new way, while parents get the tracking and control they need to ensure fiscal guidance." Obopay has also announced it is now offering a new "Refer-A-Friend" program to incent signups. It rewards Obopay users who refer their friends to signup with Obopay with $5 for each successful referral. » Continue Reading
Trying to bust corporate cafeteria lines, Sodexho, a provider of integrated food and facilities management in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, has announced that it will begin accepting MasterCard PayPass contactless cards at its on-site restaurants across the country. Sodexho said it has begun phase one of the implementation that includes 225 locations and will expand PayPass to 1,000 Sodexho-managed corporate sites by the end of 2007. » Continue Reading
I4 Commerce, parent of Bill Me Later, has announced that Mark Britto, former Senior Vice President at Amazon.com, Robert DiRomualdo, former Chairman of Borders Group, Inc. and Victor Lund, former Vice Chairman of Albertson's, Inc. have joined its Board of Directors. » Continue Reading
ACI Worldwide has announced the launch of an ACI On Demand offering, allowing financial institutions and retailers in North America to use the company’spayments software through a hosted solution arrangement. ACI says it "will configure and host a unique copy of its software to meet the needs of each customer, offering greater control than traditional outsourcing and multi-tenant arrangements while freeing clients from the job of staffing and managing their own systems infrastructure." » Continue Reading
Vicki Lee Parker writes for the McClatchy Newspapers about PayJr and other prepaid debit cards targeting teens and even younger children. She asks "is putting plastic into a child’s hand, especially one under 12, really going to teach the child how to manage money?
The PCI Security Standards Council has announced that nominations for election to the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) Board of Advisors are now open. According to the Council, "the Board of Advisors will represent the current roster of more than 100 PCI SSC Participating Organizations, and will provide strategic and technical guidance to the PCI Security Standards Council, reflecting the varied perspectives of different global stakeholders." » Continue Reading
Reuters reports that EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has said in a speech in London today that she plans to take another look at Visa's business practices after an antitrust exemption Visa negotiated in 2002 runs out.
NetBanker's Jim Bruene reports that Bank of America has begun using its bankofamerica.mobi domain - likely in preparation for its new mobile banking initiative announced last week. Bruene points out that he found a number of banks that had apparently failed to register a .mobi (for "mobile") domain name. Click here to visit www.bankofamerica.mobi.
Peter J. Howe reports for the Boston Globe about a possible data breach compromise at Stop & Shop supermarkets following discovery that some of the merchant's POS readers had been tampered with.
Walecia Konrad writes for Bankrate.com about results from a recent survey of 1,014 adults conducted for Bankrate by GfK, Roper Public Affairs and Media. The survey found that "twenty-five percent worry about how they are going to pay their credit card bills each month and 28 percent feel guilty about how much money they are putting on their cards."
In the latest issue of Computerworld, Jaikumar Vijayan interviews Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer, about how he deals with PayPal's most significant security challenge: phishing attacks. "While we have a great deal of grudging respect for the intelligence and determination of our adversaries, we ultimately want to see them in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits," Barrett says.
Binyamin Appelbaum reports for the Charlotte Observer about Wachovia's re-entry into the credit card business and how the bank is following a strategy similar to that of Wells Fargo - using the card business as part of the overall relationship strategy with the bank's customers. "Angering people with fees would be counterproductive, so Wachovia decided to forego some possible card revenues in the hopes of winning more of the customer's business," said Appelbaum.
John Leland writes for the New York Times about several blogs that help consumers work their way out of credit card debt - by talking about it online. The blogs include BloggingAwayDebt.com, Poorer Than You!, and We're in Debt.
Sara Kehaulani Goo reports for the Washington Post about Google Checkout. "Checkout handles only one transaction for every 70 that PayPal does, according to Hitwise, a firm that measures online traffic."
YeePay has announced it has partnered with China Unicom, the nation's second largest mobile operator, to promote mobile top-up service in Beijing, adding support for two more banks and launching online service for mobile top-up. » Continue Reading
This week's Economist contains an article titled "The end of the cash era" (subscription required) and subtitled "Welcome the coming age of electronic money, but safeguard the anonymity of cash". A interesting quote: "Some Japanese merchants have already begun to offer discounts to people using electronic cash. Others will follow."
An editorial in the Spartanburg (SC) Herald-Journal questions whether it's right for banks in the US to be issuing credit cards to illegal immigrants - saying that the "Bank of America has found a segment of the market that isn't currently being exploited by credit cards." The Wall St. Journal reported earlier this week on Bank of America's card issuing efforts for immigrants.
In an article titled 'New Credit Cards May Leak Personal Information," Erik Larkin writes for PC World writes about the privacy aspects of new contactless credit cards - including a discussion of new "second generation" specifications from Visa that require the issuer not include the cardholder name in the data transmitted by the contactless card's chip.
The Pew Research Center has published a report on "What Americans Pay For - and How" (PDF) - concluding that nearly three-in-ten adults (28%) say the most common way they take care of their regular monthly bills is by an online or electronic payment. A bare majority (54%) mostly uses checks, and a small minority (15%) mostly uses cash.
Shaheen Pasha writes for CNNMoney.com about ING Direct's Electric Orange high-yield online checking account - saying that some industry analysts are skeptical of the service concept.
APACS yesterday celebrated the first anniversary of the transition in the UK to chip and PIN technology on payment cards. APACS provided a number of statistical updates on the progress and impacts of this technology upgrade. » Continue Reading
Tara Perkins and Dana Flavelle report for the Toronto Star on actions being taken by several Canadian banks to reissue credit cards following reports of security breaches of credit card data at several retailers.
Experian Consumer Direct has released its latest National Score Index study reporting that approximately 14 percent of the U.S. population has more than 10 credit cards, The study examines consumer credit card use on both a statewide and a national level. » Continue Reading
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on credit card usage in Australia - where credit card debt outstanding has reached A$38.99 billion or an average of A$2,932 per account, up 7.5 percent over the last year. Growth in both credit card spending and receivables has slowed in Australia as consumers have reacted to higher interest rates.
Discover Financial Services has announced the launch of a mobile payments and account management trial that enables participants to check their Discover Card account balances, review payment history, and make purchases using their mobile phones in place of a traditional plastic credit card. According to the company, the pilot project is being conducted by Discover Network, a division of Discover Financ
