In an article titled "Shady Shoppers Beware" in today's Wall St. Journal, Emily Maltby writes about how some merchants are fighting customers who tend to chargeback purchases by using services such as those offered by BadCustomer.com and Ignify.

The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) released the following statement in response to today's release of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, "Credit Cards: Rising Interchange Fees Have Increased Costs for Merchants but Options for Reducing Fees Pose Challenges."

"The GAO confirmed key problems that we have raised about credit card interchange fees, also known as 'swipe' fees," said Lyle Beckwith, NACS senior vice president of government relations. "They found that the 10 largest banks have a stranglehold on this market, have used it to raise their fees, which all consumers pay, and that small businesses and low-income, cash-paying consumers get the worst deal from this arrangement."

"And though Visa and MasterCard claim that swipe fees have not been increasing, and that credit card use increases sales for merchants, the GAO report solidly debunks both of those claims," said Beckwith. "The GAO report should sound the alarm that it is time for Congress to reform swipe fees."

The GAO report confirmed many of the most harmful aspects of unfair, hidden fees swipe fees that are incurred every time a consumer pays by debit or credit card. The report shows that the credit card companies and their issuing banks mislead the public about their increasing rates and about the benefits of credit cards to businesses. The report also outlines an unfair, anti-competitive system that hurts Main Street businesses and their customers in order to pad the banks' bottom lines, with little relation to the actual costs of processing payments.

The report makes it clear that, unless Congress acts to bring competition and transparency into the interchange system, the big banks and credit card companies will keep lining their pockets at the expense of small businesses and consumers nationwide.

CyberSource has announced the results of its latest annual survey of eCommerce fraud finding that "merchants in 2009 were fighting back against fraud, and seeing considerable evidence of success. U.S. and Canadian merchants expect to lose about $3.3 billion to eCommerce fraud this year, down from $4 billion last year. This is the first drop in estimated revenues lost since 2003. The percentage of revenue merchants predict they will lose in 2009, on average, is 1.2%, the lowest estimate in the 11-year history of the survey." READ MORE »

According to a new report released today by LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, U.S. merchants are incurring $191 billion in fraud losses each year. The 2009 LexisNexis® True Cost of Fraud Benchmark Study discovered that merchants must absorb nearly 10 times the identity fraud cost incurred by financial institutions. Retail merchants experience a massive $100 billion in losses solely attributed to identity fraud, which escalates to $191 billion when factoring in the additional cost of lost and stolen merchandise. The study also found that merchant fraud losses amounted to more than 20 times the total value of consumer fraud victim losses which totaled approximately $4.8 billion in 2008. READ MORE »

Vesdia has announced that it has been selected by Upromise, a free online service that helps its members earn money for college, as its new preferred provider of brick-and-mortar and catalog merchant services.

Vesdia says it "will provide more ways to save through a consistently expanding network of leading national, regional and local brick-and-mortar merchants. Through the Vesdia network, Upromise members can now earn money in their college savings account or pay down eligible student loans when shopping at an increased assortment of new retailers, and Vesdia merchant partners will be marketed through one of the most coveted loyalty programs in the United States." READ MORE »

Starbucks has announced a new customer loyalty card program called My Starbucks Rewards, which will launch on Dec. 26, 2009 in all U.S. Starbucks stores. Consolidating its two current programs, Starbucks Card Rewards and Starbucks Gold card, the new program "delivers value with no annual fee, allows members to use one registered card (any Starbucks Card) and provides customized rewards that increase with frequency of use." READ MORE »

Sears has announced new benefits and new features to provide more retail value to Sears card customers, including Credit Score Access (Sears is the first major retailer to offer its cardholders access to their credit score at no additional cost), Monthly Cardholder-only Sales and a new Sears Platinum MasterCard with a new Sears Choice Rewards program. READ MORE »

First Data has announced a relationship with Yahoo! Inc. to provide merchants with "easy-to-implement eCommerce solutions for small and mid-size merchants eager to extend their businesses to the Internet. First Data will provide merchants with point-of-sale terminals and payment processing services to complement Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and Web Hosting subscription-based products, which allow small businesses to set up their online stores and catalog web sites with simple design tools and tracking features." READ MORE »

In an article titled "Closing the Deal at the Virtual Checkout Counter", Claire Cain Miller writes for the New York Times about how consumers sometimes load up their shopping carts online - and then just abandon them. She notes that "while there is no industrywide data, some e-commerce companies estimate that only about 3 percent of shoppers who visit an e-commerce site buy something, and when they do load their shopping carts, as many as two-thirds abandon them."

In an article titled "Merchants fight for lower credit-card swipe fees", Aldo Svaldi writes for the Denver Post about merchants "revolting against the credit- and debit-card providers their customers rely on to pay them."

"We are under pressure to be as efficient as we can be to keep our prices down," said Bill Cook, owner of Howard Lorton Galleries in Denver. "The credit-card industry doesn't appear that way. They appear to have a cartel."

In an article titled "TransFS Launches Comparison Site for Credit Card Processing Fees", TechCrunch profiles TransFS - one of a new breed of websites designed to help businesses comparison shop among various merchant acquirers and ISOs for the best deal that matches their needs. TransFS collects information from the merchant and then gathers bids from providers to present back. The TransFS blog provides a steady stream of helpful, merchant-related articles as well.

Another new entrant into this space is Payments-R-Us (www.paymentsrus.com) that focuses on online merchant payment solutions. Unlike the auction process managed by TransFS, Payments-R-Us offers a free "suggester" based upon the merchant answering some basic questions about their business. Payments-R-Us also has a collection of reference materials helpful to online ecommerce merchants.

7-Eleven has announced that its franchisees and store operators have collected more than 1.6 million signatures in the “Stop Unfair Credit Card Fees” petition drive. 7-Eleven says it believes this marks the largest number of signatures collected for a public policy issue on record.

Thousands of 7-Eleven franchisees across the country asked customers to support their neighborhood stores by signing petitions calling for Congress to pass legislation that prohibits credit card networks and card-issuing banks from charging unfair transaction fees. The signature drive ran from June 22 through Aug. 10 at store counters coast to coast. READ MORE »

In an article titled "Grocery stores taking check use off shoppers' lists", Jerry Hirsch writes for the Los Angeles Times about grocery stores, including Whole Foods Markets, considering banning the use of personal checks at their stores in favor of only accepting cash and cards. Hirsh quotes a Whole Foods regional vice president who says it "prefers cash, debit cards and credit cards because they can be processed quickly and come with added protections that safeguard the interests of the consumer and the retailer."

Over on his Payment Systems blog, Andy Orrock, COO at On-Line Strategies, shares some insights into transaction times for various payment card transaction times from a large merchant.

I found the time difference between credit and offline debit cards vs. online PIN-based debit cards to be interesting with PIN debit taking 1.6 times longer. Andy shares his explanation of the timing difference in the comments.

The Merchants Payments Coalition has published a paper titled “Swipe Fee” Reform – International Lessons that takes a look at interchange fees (so-called "swipe fees" in the group's vernacular) in several markets outside the US. The paper states that "Compared to the rest of the world, U.S. swipe fees are: more than two times the rates in the UK and New Zealand, four times the rates in Australia, and over six times the cross border rates recently agreed upon by MasterCard and the EU."

Visa has released results of a new survey finding that "consumers believe retailers benefit far more from accepting credit and debit cards than they pay in costs." Visa said that the survey also found that consumers believe merchants see card cost acceptance as a part of doing business, much like paying for utilities such as electricity. READ MORE »

In an article titled "Retailers Battle Credit Card Fees", Nancy Trejos writes for the Washington Post about interchange fees. She writes that "the General Accounting Office is doing a study of the fees, as required by a law signed by President Obama in May that bans many unfair credit card industry practices."

She notes that "The Merchants Payments Coalition will release a study on Thursday of how European countries, Canada and New Zealand handle interchange fees."

We'll cover the study here on Payments News when it's released.

Walmart, MasterCard Worldwide and First Data have announced a "new, more sustainable payroll program designed to reduce the number of paper paychecks and pay stubs distributed each year to Walmart and Sam’s Club associates in the U.S. In order to benefit both associates and the environment, the electronic pay program will include the deployment of the Money Network™ MasterCard Paycard® and electronic pay stubs, which will cut down on paper consumption and provide associates easier access to their wages." READ MORE »

Glenbrook is looking for more information about providers who are providing tokenization and/or encryption products/services to merchants to help them reduce the scope of their PCI-DSS compliance obligations?

Last week, several companies responded to our Twitter tweets and LinkedIn status asking for more information - if you've already responded via email, there's no need to do so again!

But, If your company does provide tokenization/encryption services and hasn't already responded, then please do respond to this survey and tell us more about your offering. You can click "Read More" to answer our mini-survey or click here to open a fresh copy. READ MORE »

MasterCard has announced that Tim Hortons, one of North America's largest quick service restaurant chains, is now accepting MasterCard PayPass at more than 400 U.S. locations. Tim Hortons first began accepting MasterCard PayPass in many of its 3,000 stores in Canada in 2007. READ MORE »

Fiserv has announced that "Walmart has implemented the CheckFreePay service from Fiserv, enabling customers to pay bills in person at all Walmart locations in the United States. Using the CheckFreePay service, customers can pay household bills, such as their utility, mobile phone, auto loan, insurance and credit card bills, at any one of the retailer?s 3,755 domestic locations, including Walmart SuperCenters and Neighborhood Markets." READ MORE »

Radisson Hotels & Resorts has issued an open letter to its customers informing them that the computer systems of some Radisson hotels in the U.S. and Canada were accessed without authorization. According to the company, "this unauthorized access was a violation of both civil and criminal laws. Radisson has been coordinating with law enforcement to assist in their investigation of this incident. While the number of potentially affected hotels involved in this incident is limited, the data accessed may have included guest information such as the name printed on a guest’s credit card or debit card, a credit or debit card number, and/or a card expiration date." READ MORE »

In a TechCrunch post this morning titled "1-800-FLOWERS.COM Sets Up Shop Inside Facebook", Robin Wauters writes about the online retailer's new eCommerce store launched on its Facebook page inside Facebook. According to Wauters, "Registered users can now order all kinds of floral products from the popular florist and gift shop without ever leaving the social network."

On-Line Strategies has announced it has completed certification and production implementation of an Electronic Check Acceptance interface with a major authorizer as part a Fortune 100 client project. According to OLS, "OLS.Switch is a payment transaction processing engine, built using best-of-breed technologies to implement a unique new design supporting the latest industry standards, regulations, and best practices for payments and settlement processing." READ MORE »

MasterCard has announced that The Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer, will begin accepting MasterCard PayPass cards at its 1,974 retail locations across the United States. "With MasterCard PayPass, The Home Depot customers can enjoy faster transactions and greater payment convenience by simply tapping their MasterCard PayPass cards or devices on a PayPass reader at checkout to complete their purchases." READ MORE »

Amazon.com has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Zappos.com, a leader in online apparel and footwear sales. According to Amazon, "the acquisition brings together two companies who share a passion for serving customers and whose customers benefit from cultures of innovation and long term thinking." READ MORE »

MasterCard has announced that "the sporting goods retailer, Sports Authority, will begin accepting MasterCard PayPass contactless payments at all of its 450 store locations in the U.S. In addition to using traditional magnetic-stripe payment cards, customers can now tap their PayPass contactless cards or devices on electronic readers at check-out to make their purchases, enabling quicker transactions and more convenient payments." READ MORE »

In an article titled "Retailers Prepare to Fight Credit Card Fees" in Thursday's New York Times, Andrew Martin writes about how merchants in the US are mounting a "fresh offensive" against payment card interchange fees.

Martin reports that the retailers sense that the momentum has shifted in their favor - while the banks and payment card networks are gearing for a "furious battle on Capitol Hill."

The Consumerist takes note of 7-Eleven's new campaign to get customers to sign a petition to Congress protesting payment card interchange fees. "The vendor of last resort is mad about interchange fees, the fees banks charge merchants for accepting a credit card payment. The recent credit card legislation signed into law protected consumers from rate increases, but stayed silent with regards to interchange fees."

In an article titled "Roping Consumers into Fee Tug-of-War", Maria Aspan writes for the American Banker about 7-Eleven's effort to garner consumer signatures on petitions that will be forwarded to the US Congress as it considers legislation dealing with credit card interchange fees.

Aspan writes that some industry observers feel that the time is right for such a petition drive as "a lot of people are just fed up with credit card companies in general and they're willing to sign anything".