ISOs

After months of wrangling, the Federal Reserve Board’s decision to cap debit card interchange rates may have seemed like the final word. The reality, however, appears more complex.

A new point-of-sale terminal from Vivotech Inc. capable of accepting Near Field Communication mobile payments and chip-and-PIN transactions could help position U.S. merchants to embrace EMV smart card technology and perhaps save them money on security-standards compliance costs, the vendor believes.

Growing interest in mobile-payment technologies for smartphones appears to be spurring a gold-rush mentality among would-be developers looking to produce the next hit mobile-payment application.

Not surprisingly, many merchants find their monthly account statements for card acceptance almost hopelessly confusing, an executive with the Michigan Retailers Association says.

Wells Fargo & Co. seems likely to experience a flood of customer complaints as it starts to experiment with debit card fees to offset revenue losses it expects from the Federal Reserve Board’s interchange-rate cut, observes one analyst.

Cardtronics Inc.’s acquisition of Access To Money Inc. keeps the ATM ISO on the path it set for itself when the company went public in 2007, notes one observer.

Isis, the telecommunication consortium intent on offering a mobile-payment scheme, is adding a wider range of mobile-wallet capabilities to keep up with its aggressive rival, Google Inc.

U.S. consumers continue to show greater discipline in making on-time credit card payments compared with their mortgage payments as part of a phenomenon that began with the most recent recession, new Experian data show.

Google Inc.’s Aug. 15 announcement of an agreement to acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings strengthens Google’s position in mobile payments, one observer says.

The latest forecast of mobile payment growth, from U.K. research company Visiongain, calls for $150 billion in mobile-phone-generated payments to take place globally by the end of this year. That far surpasses the estimate Gartner came out with last month, which predicted that worldwide mobile payment volume would total $86.1 billion in 2011.

ACI Worldwide Inc. is upgrading its payments server to enhance security systems and marketing processes for retail clients, including the ability to offer consumers immediate rewards at the point of sale, a company executive says.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council intends to clear up confusion regarding tokenization, a process designed to protect payment card security.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the demise of the decoupled-debit card may have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, a company that operates as an issuer and processor is offering such as card and hopes ISOs and agents will sell it to merchants.

Visa Inc.’s new U.S. EMV initiative will have far-reaching consequences for merchants and card issuers, but the other card networks may not follow it exactly in drawing their roadmaps for migrating to advanced chip card technologies, some observers say.

An owner of a new restaurant might not hesitate to buy a $300 fire extinguisher to comply with local fire codes, but he might put off spending about half that much to ensure compliance with standards designed to protect customers’ credit card data, a new report suggests.

Most large U.S. merchants easily will comply with Visa Inc.’s first level of incentives to make payment terminals ready to accept contact and contactless EMV cards next year as part of the card brand’s U.S. push toward chip-and-PIN technology, but it may take smaller merchants a year or two to get there, payments industry experts suggest.

If data-security standards compliance in the United States mirrors what has occurred in Europe, the onset of EMV chip-and-PIN technology in the U.S. will not mean major retailers will skip validating their compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard each year, the head of the PCI Security Standards Council contends.

When the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council was formed five years ago to establish industry standards, General Manager Bob Russo figured about 50 to 60 merchants, associations or banks would participate. He was in for a surprise.

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. plans to offer a mobile-payments application that can enable a merchant’s employees to complete sales transactions anywhere in or out of the store.

Visa Inc. has introduced a series of incentives to spur the U.S. to adopt chip cards–a change once considered as likely as the country switching to the metric system.