Headlines:
New Gas-Station Service from BB&T
BB&T Corp. of Winston-Salem, N.C., has introduced a merchant-processing service designed for independent gasoline retailers.
Petro Partner, from BB&T's merchant services unit, is now available in the southern and midwestern states where the banking company has a presence. It was pilot tested with a few independent retailers and small chains.
"Our product is geared toward the unbranded segment," said Chris Caskey, BB&T's senior vice president of merchant services, on Wednesday. "We think the market opportunity is pretty big for us," he said, though he offered no details on its size.
The company hopes to capitalize on moves by some national petroleum companies to drop small retailers that fail to meet volume quotas, he said.
Those retailers often need to establish their own merchant processing relationships. "Petro Partner is a valuable service to meet the payment processing needs of our petroleum merchants," said Bud Tremblay, BB&T's manager of bankcard and merchant services, in a press release. "Our petroleum clients have told us they wanted a more flexible and comprehensive way to handle their payments."
Petro Partner processes gas-pump payments made with major credit cards, PIN debit, electronic benefits transfer, and the fleet credit cards Wright Express and Voyager.
It will also process payments at the convenience stores attached to gas stations, and Mr. Caskey said the service could extend to repair shops and other automobile-related businesses, "even car washes - they have a need to accept fleet cards."
Digital Insight Adds Spam-Fighting Feature
To help its bank customers fight spam and e-mail fraud, Digital Insight Corp. of Calabasas, Calif., has added Sender Policy Framework authentication to the servers on which it hosts bank Web sites.
Such authentication enables Internet service providers to spot and reject e-mails that seem to come from financial institutions but actually do not. Many online scams, especially phishing, use fake bank e-mail headers.
Digital Insight announced the upgrade Wednesday.
