In a new PaymentsViews.com article titled "Why Debit Cards Aren't a Product...and Why 'Decoupled Debit' Could Change All That", Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson asks whether debit cards are products - or features?

National Payment Card Association, an early player in ACH decoupled debit cards with payment settlement system that offer merchants lower transaction fees than credit or debit cards, has announced it has launched GasCapRewards, a nationally branded, lower-cost, turnkey payment system.

First Data Corp. has a growing collection of white papers in its Thought Leadership Library covering a wide range of payments-related topics. The latest papers include:

• Mobile Account Management: The Mobile Commerce Enabler - by Barry McCarthy, President, Mobile Commerce Solutions
• Innovations in Payments and Decoupled Debit Reshape the Power of Merchant Loyalty Programs - by Timothy Horton, Vice President of Product Management
• Financial Institutions Must Rethink Their Remote Deposit Capture Support Models - by Kathleen Houseman, Vice President, Remote Deposit Capture Solutions, and Mark Nevle, Director, Product Development

Glenbrook’s Carol Coye Benson interviewed Steve Ellis, NACHA Chairman, recently about the use of ACH to access consumer checking accounts and NACHA's Secure Vault Payments initiative. Read on for her full report. READ MORE

Morriss Partee, CEO of EverythingCU.com, blogs on the Payment Industry Insider blog about an email he recently received from Capital One offering him "big rewards for his debit purchases - without changing banks." Partee writes: "No longer a regional effort tied to rewards at a supermarket chain, they now (presumably) have gone national, and have tied it to their own reward program. On top of that, they are charging the consumer $19.95 per year for the service."

You can read more about Capital One's Debit MasterCard at the Capital One web site. A comprehensive FAQ on the product is available. Rewards are only earned on signature-based (not PIN-based) purchases. Note that the new debit card is also "paperless" - a paper statement of account activity is only available upon request each month and has a $3.00 fee.

Celent has published a new report titled 'Disruption in the Payments World' saying that 'the current euphoric era for many issuers will be disrupted and quite possibly eliminated over the next three years.' Why? Celent's reasons include a forecast that interchange rates will begin to decline, that a large payments company will launch an alternative network to MasterCard and Visa, and that credit card issuers will need to diversify their payments mix by adding decoupled debit payment options. READ MORE

Will Wade reports for the American Banker (subscription required) that Capital One is shutting down two merchant pilots of its decoupled debit card product that was announced last May.

Marianne Crowe, Vice President, Emerging Payments Research Group, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, gave a presentation last week titled "Emerging Payments - The Changing Landscape" to the Maine Association of Community Banks and to the New Hampshire Community Bankers Association. Crowe's presentation discusses the growth in debit card payments, the emergence (and potential threats to banks) of decoupled debit cards, prepaid cards for the unbanked, and the use of the Internet for bill payment, ecommerce purchases, and person-to-person or account-to-account money transfers. She also discusses contactless payments and mobile banking.

The Mercator Advisory Group has published a new report titled "Restricted Authorization Networks: Winner Takes All" by Tim Sloane, Director of Mercator's Prepaid Advisory Service. The report explores "how merchants and others can bring Prepaid Cards and Debit Cards to market, funded by Decoupled Debit and other mechanisms, to help consumers better manage their expenses and deliver meaningful savings - and therefore addressing this growing consumer demand. But most importantly, this report identifies how Restricted Authorization Networks can control how these cards are used in ways that were never before possible."

Aite Group has published a new report titled "Who Wants a Decoupled Debit Card?" that it says "reveals that there is a sizeable potential market for decoupled debit cards in the United States, with about a third of cardholders expressing interest." READ MORE

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson recently spoke with Elliott McEntee, President and CEO of NACHA about two current payment industry issues - NACHA's reaction to "de-coupled debits" and the progress of the Secure Vault Payments program. She's filed this report on the discussion.

Mercator Advisory Group has announced a new report titled "Decoupled Debit - Let's Take a Closer Look" that the company says "evaluates the recent emergence of this new and possibly disruptive technology in the financial services industry, decoupled debit. Decoupled debit is an alternative based ACH debit card solution that utilizes two existing systems that are well defined in the financial services industry but were not designed to work in combination with each other, the ACH network and the branded payment networks such as MasterCard, Visa, NYCE, etc."

Maria Bruno-Britz writes for Bank Systems & Technology about decoupled debit - and whether it's a threat or an opportunity for banks.

HSBC Finance Corporation’s card and retail services business and Pathmark Stores have announced "an agreement to offer a multi-purpose rewards and payment card for supermarket customers. The new Pathmark Advantage Payment Card enhances the current Pathmark Advantage Club card by providing an easy and superior one-swipe payment process that also generates loyalty rewards." The card is linked to the consumer's checking account and functions as a PIN-debit card for purchases. The cards will also be accepted "at more than 200,000 merchant locations in the U.S. that participate in the Tempo Payment Network."

Bankrate.com has published its Fall 2007 Debit Card Study - exploring debit card reward programs, fees for PIN debit usage, Capital One's decoupled debit, etc.

Tempo announced a new decoupled debit strategy called Tempo Debit about two months ago. We recently asked Tempo Payments CEO Mike Grossman for an update on his company's activities since that announcement. Our Q&A exchange with him follows.

Broox Peterson shares some of his thoughts in a commentary reflecting on Capital One's recent introduction of a new "decoupled debit" card program.

Tempo Payments made two announcements this morning. The first, a "Decoupled Debit Option for Financial Institutions" that "enables financial institutions and other issuers to rapidly deploy comprehensive ACH-based debit card programs." The second, the "availability of the Tempo Payment Platform, the first hosted solution that enables financial institutions and other issuers to rapidly deploy innovative card payment solutions."

Cornerstone Advisors' Terence Roche writes for Gonzobanker about the new raid on retail bank revenues coming from the likes of Capital One with its new "Capital One decoupled debit card" product and HSBC/Tempo's new CVS-branded debit card. Earlier this week, we noticed that Sheetz has begun working with Capital One on its new debit card program.

Both of these innovative debit card products ride the ACH rails into the consumer's bank checking account - there's no need for the consumer to switch banks - rewarding the cardholder in the process with a much richer rewards program stimulating higher usage and frequency on the new entrants' cards vs. the bank's own traditional (and most likely unrewarded) debit card. Meanwhile, the retail banker is left with the costs of servicing the ACH-based payment and earns no revenue on the transaction itself.

A time for concern? Seems to us that retail bank payments strategists may want to be updating their board presentations! Read Roche's article and decide for your self!

QSR Magazine is reporting that Sheetz has begun "testing an innovative new program that provides debit card customers with rewards similar to those available to credit customers — The Sheetz Debitz MasterCard" with Capital One. Rewards are available on purchases at both Sheetz as well as anywhere else MasterCard is accepted. This is the first merchant using Capital One's recently announced "Decoupled Debit" product that we've come across.

Aleksandra Todorova writes for SmartMoney about Capital One's new "decoupled debit" card strategy. (See earlier posts on this new Capital One product on Payments News here and here.)

The Aite Group has announced a new report titled "The Next Big Thing in Cards: Co-Branded Decoupled Debit Cards" that examines Capital One's recent launch of a MasterCard decoupled debit card - calling it "a major breakthrough in card issuing." Aite Group views the product as squarely taking on deposit institutions, and predicts it will have a long-lasting impact on both the card and banking industries. See also Payments News' earlier coverage of this innovative new product. READ MORE

We spoke last week with Matt Sexstone, head of business development in Capital One's Merchant Client Services unit about their plans to challenge the status quo in the merchant co-brand market. Based on our discussion, Capital One "gets it" with respect to merchants seeking new payments solutions that drive incremental sales and customer loyalty - and has begun offering a unique approach that seems well suited to major retail merchants. Read on for details.