Kate Fitzgerald is an Arizona-based senior editor for American Banker and longtime payments reporter. Fitzgerald began her journalism career at the San Diego Tribune, and has worked as a reporter and editor at several other publications, including Advertising Age and the Arizona Republic. She is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College and holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
- PSO content
The worldwide payments industry in 2008 is facing a year of unprecedented growth opportunities and possible upheavals, as economic and political pressures converge with new technological and competitive developments in key markets.
January 1 - PSO content
Discover Financial Services is betting heavily on a broad expansion plan whose results over the next year could determine Discover's future as a standalone card brand.
December 1 - PSO content
Credit card charge-offs this year generally returned to the normal levels issuers experienced before a new bankruptcy law took effect in October 2005. The law, which makes it more difficult for holders of card and other loans to erase their debts, triggered a tsunami of bankruptcy filings shortly before it took effect and a dearth of filings for several months thereafter.
December 1 - PSO content
Merchants fed up with paying ever-rising credit card interchange fees soon may get a break. But experts say immediate relief is more likely to come from new payment-system innovations than from federal legislation.
November 1 - PSO content
Near-term damage from the subprime mortgage market's collapse will be minimal for most credit card issuers, say experts. But ripple effects over the next 12 months could be more severe.
October 1 - PSO content
Like many U.S.-based credit card issuers and transaction processors hungry to expand into international markets, Global Payments Inc. needed a place to anchor its operations in Europe. Looking at a map, it became obvious to Paul R. Garcia, chairman, president and CEO of the Atlanta-based processor, that the geographic center of Europe is in Prague, in the Czech Republic, not in a more obvious financial capital such as London.
September 1 - PSO content
Many senior payments-industry executives received significant boosts in their total compensation packages last year. Overall, the median total compensation for top executives appears to have declined 23% last year, to $2.3 million from $3 million in 2005, according to exclusive data supplied to Cards&Payments by Standard & Poor's.
August 1 - PSO content
Many of the millions of Hispanics who have arrived in the United States in recent years want a credit card just as much as any U.S. citizen. But because there are little historic data about new immigrants, issuers usually classify them as higher-risk customers who require laborious, case-by-case evaluation.
May 1 - PSO content
Intense competition is forcing even the most conservative credit card issuers to venture into riskier territory in search of more revenue.
April 1 - PSO content
A wave of new government regulations is spurring many credit card issuers to root out bad data lurking in their information systems, while simultaneously the issuers are improving business processes.
March 1 - PSO content
No one loves the U.S. Postal Service more than credit card issuers, who are likely to mail a record 5.4 billion solicitations in 2004. CCM looks at what's behind the numbers as well as what's in the envelope.
December 1 - PSO content
Internet advertising spending is expected to reach $9 billion by year-end, and credit card marketers are helping to fuel that trend by boosting interactive budgets and making bolder moves online.
October 1 - PSO content
Frequent-shopper cards are as common in supermarkets as ketchup, but they've done little to enhance customer loyalty. Now grocers are looking for spicier marketing ingredients.
March 1 - PSO content
Credit card marketing budgets are thawing out after two rather chilly years. But consumers increasingly are throwing out card mail, and telemarketing now has a ball and chain. So where will the money go?
January 2 - PSO content
With the coming of the Starbucks credit card, marketers say the restaurant sector could be the next big opportunity for cobranded cards. But will issuers garner only low-calorie profits?
November 1 - PSO content
Wireless terminals may be the best-known form of mobile point-of-sale technology, but contactless cards, which represent the cardholder side of wireless applications, are registering in a big way on card-industry executives' radar.
November 1 - PSO content
Credit card issuers fell out of favor on many college campuses because of worries about growing student debt. But now issuers are ingratiating themselves with administrators and getting readmitted-and even helping to develop classes.
June 1