Cards

John A. Ward 3rd, a veteran of the card and banking industries, has rejoined the board of Innovative Card Technologies Inc.

BluePay has developed a processing product designed to help nonprofit organizations increase funding and decrease expenses by enabling consumers to set up reoccurring donations, according to the company.

VeriFone Holdings Inc. today announced it has acquired the Taxi Media business from Clear Channel Outdoor Inc., a division of Clear Channel Communications Inc. The deal expands VeriFone’s taxi sales staff to about 30 workers from a “handful” previously, a VeriFone spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.

Historically rivals, alternative payment providers and banks are laying down their swords.

UniRush LLC announced its prepaid RushCard has added a card-to-card funds transfer feature for users who want to transfer money between prepaid Visa RushCards.

Anyone who has seen advertisements from Visa Inc.'s "Currency of Progress" campaign can't help noticing a stark contrast in its corporate message.

Hoping to tap an emerging market, Visa Inc., MasterCard Worldwide and American Express Co. have been working to open their networks to third-party developers of software and smartphone applications.

High card-payment transaction costs are helping to keep the number of European vending machines that accept noncash payments low, Jürgen Göbel, chairman of European Vending Association’s cashless committee, tells PaymentsSource. The trade group represents 63 vending-machine companies and 20 national vending associations in Europe, where at least 3.8 million machines produced 2008 revenues of 13 billion euros (US$18.6 billion), the trade group says.

Luup International Ltd. plans to establish a mobile phone-based remittance service for the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, a spokesperson for the Norway-based payments provider tells PaymentsSource. The service will enable the approximately 500,000 Indonesians in the United Arab Emirates to transfer funds home.

So-called power moms–those who meticulously shop for their families–prefer to use debit cards or cash to pay for purchases instead of credit cards, according to CheapToday.com, a Web site that features sale offers from various large U.S. merchants. The site regularly polls its members about financial and retail-shopping issues, says Chris Hill, president and CEO. In a survey earlier this month in which 134 power moms responded, 43% reported using Visa check cards for their holiday purchases, while 14% chose to pay with debit MasterCards. Of the other respondents, 32% reported using cash or checks to pay, 3% reported using retail store cards, 2% reported using American Express cards, and 6% reported using other options such as gift cards and Discover card. Respondents supplied myriad anecdotal comments on why they chose using debit cards instead of credit cards, Hill says. “We got a lot of responses around the credit hangover everyone experienced in 2009,” says Hill, noting that shoppers were specific about singling out credit as an undesirable choice. “One person said used she used her check book and was trying to hard not to use credit this year, so there’s a very conscious movement away from credit.” Survey participants tended to use cash to control how much they spent this year, he says. “When they did use credit, there was a negative connotation. But people love debit cards,” says Hill. For example, one respondent said she “unfortunately” had to use credit cards to get by this year.

As consumers continue to seek ways to control spending in a troubled economy, expect debit card issuers to play a key role, according to Stacey Pinkerd, head of global debit products at Visa Inc. “We expect issuers will continue to focus on developing new, innovative rewards and loyalty platforms designed to increase usage, deepen relationships and to differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace,” he writes in an e-mail to PaymentsSource.com.

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.

Though as many as 46% of Americans are concerned with identity theft, banks that support efforts such as mobile banking should be cautious in how they communicate the issue to consumers, Susan Menke, behavioral economist at Mintel Comperemedia, tells CardLine in analyzing the results of an online Mintel survey of 2,000 Americans delving into their concerns about identity theft.

VeriFone Holdings Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, says the global recession forced it to trim its sales and marketing expenses by 19.7% this year compared with 2008, according to the company’s fiscal 2009 annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. VeriFone’s fiscal year ends Oct. 31.

NCR Corp.’s transition from a manufacturer of ATMs to a self-service technology company is becoming more evident with its expansion into the fast-growing self-service DVD-rental kiosk business.

Maureen Feeney Roser, an administrator for a Delaware merchant group, was not pleased with the administrative burden caused by the organization’s gift-certificate program.

In a move designed to gain entry into a rapidly growing prepaid-payments market, an Atlanta-based middle market private equity firm recently acquired Prepaid Solutions USA from West Suburban Bank Bancorp Inc. of Illinois and renamed it Prepaid Solutions Inc.

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.

Cardtronics Inc., which named Steven A. Rathgaber its new CEO Monday, paid him a $200,000 one-time signing bonus to lead the world’s largest ATM independent sales organization, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

NCR Corp.’s recent hiring of Richard Bravman as its first chief marketing officer offers more evidence that the company is transitioning from its traditional role as an ATM manufacturer to a technology company involved in a wide-ranging line of businesses.