On the web:

• In A.T.M. Robbery Case, a Splashy Trail of Big Spending - NY Times - "The eight young men, according to law enforcement officials, had just pulled off the first of two thefts that would ultimately rank among the biggest in New York City history…"
• Exclusive: Indian card processor in $45 million heist is ElectraCard - sources - Reuters - "Experts in cyber security said the heists expose an Achilles heel in the global financial industry: prepaid debit cards."
• The Problem with Prepaid: $45 Million ATM Heist Edition - American Banker - BankThink - "This fraud scheme adds to the many reasons banks approach prepaid products with caution."
• How to Pull Off a $45 Million Global ATM Heist - TechNews Daily - "This specific attack requires a very high level of sophistication and perhaps some inside help."
• Mobile Gift Card App Gyft Partners With BitPay To Start Accepting Bitcoin Payments In Its Android App - TechCrunch - "Gyft is proud to be a pioneer in the bitcoin universe and we are excited about the possibilities for further innovation on our platform…"

Galileo Processing has announced a "new suite of solutions that enable payment card issuing banks and payment card program managers to leverage the power of cloud computing while ensuring they meet required levels of security, performance, availability and regulatory compliance."

eCommLink has announced he release of its new global processing platform, the "first of its kind to support the full array of international payments. The architecture of the new platform enables simple localization of the processing engine based on regional regulations, language, currency and processing standards while still offering the flexibility and robust feature set that has made eCommLink's legacy platform so successful."

WAUSAU Financial Systems has announced an outsourced health care remittance processing service - the Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management Service - that that company says "makes it easy for financial institutions of any size to process complex commercial health care payments without investing in the technical infrastructure, people and expertise required to build this capability." READ MORE »

eCommLink, a value-added prepaid processor, has announced that its investors, led by Syntek Capital, have provided $10 million in additional funding to support eCommLink’s domestic and international growth plans. READ MORE »

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.

TxVia has announced it has raised $15.5 million in Series C financing, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Also participating were all current institutional investors, including Espírito Santo Ventures, High Peaks Venture Partners and Village Ventures. New York City Investment Fund joined as a new co-investor.

According to the firm, "the funding follows important milestones for TxVia, including successful large-scale client deployments of the company’s groundbreaking platform-as-a-service (PaaS) delivery model for prepaid card processing. Today, TxVia has more than five million reloadable and nonreloadable cards on file in both B2B and B2C prepaid applications." READ MORE »

Heartland Payment Systems has announced that "it has formed an internal department dedicated exclusively to the development of end-to-end encryption to protect merchant and consumer data used in financial transactions. For the past year, Robert O. Carr, Heartland's chairman and chief executive officer, has been advocating for payments industry adoption of this technology - which will protect data at rest as well as data in motion - as an improvement for payment transaction security." READ MORE »

Austin Ventures has announced the acquisition of three companies and the subsequent formation of Century Payments Inc. (“CPI”) in partnership with CEO-in-Residence Robert Wechsler.

The new company, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, will focus on providing growth capital strategic assistance to merchant service providers (“MSPs”) and on building best-in-class sales forces to support our network of distribution partners. AV has committed up to $50MM of equity capital to support management’s strategy of additional acquisitions and organic growth. Mr. Wechsler will lead the new organization as its President and Chief Executive Officer.

Javelin Strategy & Research has just released a new report titled "Prepaid Product Evolution - Align Processor Relationship With Strategic Goals" written by Bruce Cundiff. From the abstract:

"This Javelin research report makes use of consumer data analyzing the propensity to use prepaid products, and also in-depth interviews with prepaid program managers at financial institutions and other third parties to understand the key components of a prepaid processing relationship and how prepaid program managers must approach the establishment of such a relationship. "

MasterCard Worldwide has announced that Swiss Bankers Prepaid Services Ltd. will become the first financial institution to use the global prepaid transaction processing capabilities of MasterCard Integrated Processing Solutions (IPS), the debit and prepaid processing platform introduced earlier this year. READ MORE »

TSYS has announced that an agreement with JPMorgan Chase with respect to the discontinuation of the servicing of Washington Mutual Bank's (WaMu's) consumer card portfolio by TSYS. Chase will pay TSYS fees for deconversion and termination which both parties have agreed not to disclose. The deconversion is expected to take place in March 2009 after which Chase will process the WaMu portfolio in house on the technology platform it licenses from TSYS. READ MORE »

Visa Inc. and Yalamanchili Software Exports (P) Limited have announced that they have formed a joint venture that they say "will allow Visa to extend its industry-leading processing capabilities in some of the fastest-growing payments regions in the world. Visa will have a controlling interest in the joint venture, named Visa Processing Service Pte. Ltd. (VPS). It begins operations this week and will serve existing processing clients." A new website at www.visaprocessingservice.com provides more information. READ MORE »

Javelin Strategy & Research has announced results from a study of how a prepaid card issuer should assess and choose a processing partner in order to obtain the greatest success from prepaid card programs. According to Javelin, the processor choice is often overlooked and undervalued by prepaid program managers - but growth in the complexity of prepaid products underscores the importance of selecting the right processor. READ MORE »

Viewpointe and PaymentsNation have jointly announced that "Viewpointe has agreed to purchase the assets of PaymentsNation. The announcement follows the successful vote by the overwhelming majority of PaymentsNations’ members to approve the transaction. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Both organizations are working diligently to complete the conditions of closing in the near future. When closing conditions are met and the deal is completed, the company will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Viewpointe, LLC." READ MORE »

First Data Corp. has announced that it has entered into a new payment processing agreement with Nordstrom fsb, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nordstrom, Inc. and a federally chartered thrift savings bank.

"The seven-year agreement calls for First Data to provide card processing, call center and back office automation tools, fraud and risk management, customer analytics as well as e-statements and email alerts for Nordstrom's entire card portfolio including Nordstrom Visa, private label credit and debit cards and commercial cards for Nordstrom employees. The portfolio totals about 4.5 million card accounts on file. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. READ MORE »

Tony Adams writes for the Columbus, Georgia Ledger-Enquirer about TSYS - asking "can TSYS grow?"

YALAMANCHILI International and ANZ have announced signing a 5 year agreement for YALAMANCHILI to provide prepaid processing services to ANZ in the Asia Pacific region. The first prepaid card program issued under this agreement is the ANZ Stadium Visa payWave card. The card will be the first reloadable, prepaid contactless card in Australia and will be launched at ANZ Stadium in Sydney for the Bledisloe Cup on 26 July, 2008. READ MORE »

Denver-based IP Commerce has announced it has raised $17 million in Series C financing led by Venrock with Total Technology Ventures also joining as a new investor. The Company’s existing investors, Meritage Funds, Appian Ventures and Iron Gate Capital also participated in the financing. READ MORE »

CSC has announced that "MasterCard Worldwide is using CSC's CAMS II Card & Merchant System to power its newly launched debit and prepaid processing platform, MasterCard Integrated Processing Solutions (IPS). The MasterCard platform provides a suite of debit and card issuer processing services that enables financial institutions to quickly expand their payments offerings across banking channels." READ MORE »

WAUSAU Financial Systems and ClairMail have announced an agreement to extend the mobile channel to WAUSAU's remittance processing solutions. According to the two companies, "by integrating ClairMail's Mobile Lockbox technology with its remittance processing managed service, WAUSAU will empower its customers to include payments via mobile phones as part of their receivables processing offering to their clients." READ MORE »

First Data Corp. has announced that it has signed an agreement with EUFISERV and its fifteen shareholders (including twelve European banks and banking organizations) to expand and develop the European inter-bank processing network managed by EUFISERV. The two companies said that "connecting the existing networks of EUFISERV and First Data will create the opportunity for customers to access more than 74,000 ATMs, 1.5 million POS merchants and to reach more than 165 million debit and credit card accounts in Europe." READ MORE »

Metavante Technologies Ltd. has announced that it has been granted Payment Application Best Practice (PABP) certification from Visa Europe for both card issuing and transaction acquiring. Metavante Technologies Ltd., a provider of prepaid and debit card processing and licensed software in Europe, is part of Metavante, a U.S.-based provider of banking and payments technology. READ MORE »

Although taken private by KKR last fall, First Data Corp. continues to announce its financial results - and today reported financial results for the first quarter of 2008. Consolidated revenues were up 16% to $2.1 billion while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were up 8% to $586 million. FDC also commented on Chase Paymentech, its largest merchant alliance, noting that it "expects the alliance to end prior to its existing expiration date in 2010." The company is holding a conference call tomorrow morning to review its results. READ MORE »

ACI Worldwide has announced that MasterCard Worldwide has selected ACI's electronic payment solutions as key elements of the new MasterCard Integrated Processing Solutions (IPS) announced in early April. MasterCard IPS provides banks a suite of branded debit network and card issuer processing services including PIN and signature debit and prepaid processing, and ATM driving. READ MORE »

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency late last week issued new risk management guidance to banks on the subject of payment processors. The OCC said that 'certain merchants, such as telemarketers, pose a higher risk than other merchants and require additional due diligence and close monitoring.' READ MORE »

TSYS has announced the renewal of a long-term agreement with Target Corporation to service its REDcard portfolio. The multi-year agreement will include systems processing for the Target Visa Credit Card, Target Credit CardS, Target Check Card and the Target Business Card. According to TSYS, Target was recently named by the Nilson Report as one of the top-five Visa credit card issuers, with more than 21.4 million accounts on file. Target began working with TSYS in 2000 for the launch of its Visa product. TSYS began supporting the Target Credit Card portfolio in 2005. READ MORE »

Late today, Alliance Data Systems announced that it has terminated the May 17, 2007 merger agreement providing for the acquisition of Alliance Data by affiliates of The Blackstone Group. READ MORE »

Metavante has announced an agreement with Advanced Payment Solutions (APS), making it the payment processing house for the entire prepaid portfolio of APS, including the cashplus prepaid gold MasterCard, the Gap Year cashplus card and a range of other fully re-loadable prepaid MasterCard programmes. READ MORE »

Frontier Airlines this morning announced it had voluntarily filed to reorganize under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code late last night. The airline is continuing normal flight operations today. READ MORE »