Merchant

No single market for new business surfaced in a recent survey of independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers. The survey findings, contained in the report from Aite Group LLC “ISOs and Merchant Acquirers: Two Sides of the Same Coin,” suggest ISOs and acquirers have different views on where they might find new card-accepting merchants.

The payment terminal is about to become a point-of-sale entertainment center, as VeriFone Holdings Inc. prepares to expand the marketing engine it designed for taxicabs to large retailers.

Home prices are leveling out after an unexpected rebound in the spring and summer while consumers are feeling a little better about the overall economy, according to two closely watched reports released on Tuesday.

After a two-month run of improvement, November charge-offs on credit cards rose about half a percentage point to 10.56%, according to Moody's Investors Service in its latest Credit Card Indices report. The delinquency rate for November also rose, to 6.2%.

ISOs and merchant acquirers alike foresee a variety of challenges and potential new revenue in 2010, but exactly which ones differs between the two types of organization, the results of a recent Aite Group LLC survey suggest.

ISOs and acquirers faced many challenges in 2009 largely because of the ongoing difficult economy that altered the business landscape, according to some of ISO&Agent Weekly’s editorial board members. The publication has assembled year-end thoughts from some of its board members.

Merchants processing from 1 million to 6 million MasterCard transactions no longer have to meet a Dec. 31, 2010, deadline to have a third-party security assessor perform an onsite assessment of their payment networks for compliance with Payment Card Industry data security standards unless they want to do so voluntarily, according to a MasterCard spokesperson. This is a reversal from a policy MasterCard contained in an Aug. 17 Site Data Protection program document that would have required such so-called Level 2 merchants to pay for a qualified security assessor to audit their compliance by Dec. 31, 2010. Now MasterCard has moved the compliance deadline to June 30, 2011, and made the onsite assessment optional. Level 2 merchants will be required annually to complete a self-assessment questionnaire and perform quarterly network-security scans of their systems. Merchant employees completing the self-assessments must have completed Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council training and pass the council’s accreditation program, according to a MasterCard Dec. 15 Global Security Bulletin. The Aug. 17 summary of changes to MasterCard’s Site Data Protection program said the earlier change was designed to aid the “consistent application and implementation of [data security-standard] requirements.”

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While banks and government agencies are increasing efforts to save troubled home loans, the attempts thus far have not slowed a rise in foreclosures, according to a report released this week by the Offices of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

Element Payment Services Inc., a Phoenix-based independent sales organization, will use services from Trustwave, a Chicago-based payment-security company, as part of the ISO’s effort to improve payment security among its smaller merchants, Trustwave says today.