Payment processing

WASHINGTON — One day after introduction of a bipartisan bill to repeal the new debit interchange cap, supporters of that cap struck back Oct. 13 by calling for an antitrust investigation into whether banks and trade groups are colluding on prices.

CHICAGO—Consumers will decide which mobile wallets they want to use and that is why financial institutions should participate in as many as possible, a Citigroup Inc. executive on Oct. 12 told attendees here at the BAI Retail Delivery conference.

With e-commerce becoming a bigger target for payment data theft, Global Payments Inc. intends to provide its online merchants with another set of fraud-detection tools.

PayPal Inc. is putting itself at nearly every possible point of a consumer's banking relationship – from account-opening to payments and even reward-redemption – through a series of new partnerships.

U.S. Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Congressman Bill Owens (D-New York) today plan to introduce legislation aimed at repealing the debit card interchange rate-control provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the lawmakers announced.

In an effort to thwart fraud attempts at the earliest stage of the online ticket-purchasing process, Turkish Airlines Inc. has opted to link its website to CyberSource Corp.’s fraud-monitoring services.

Though it established a two-tier rate structure to accommodate issuers exempt from new caps on debit card interchange established by the Federal Reserve Board, Visa Inc. made only minor changes to the rates acquirers use to determine how much they pay card issuers with less than $10 billion in assets.

One industry analyst calls Braintree Inc. “a David in a Goliath market” among online and mobile payment providers. Another says the Chicago-based company must be offering “something special” to experience its past year’s growth.

Transaction processor TransFirst has purchased RST Ventures Inc., an electronic payment processing services provider that does business as US Merchant Services, TransFirst announced Oct. 5.

The Secure Remote Payment Council reached a watershed moment of sorts last month when it cosponsored a one-day symposium with the Federal Reserve Board of Chicago.

Now that new Federal Reserve Board rules essentially have cut in half the interchange portion of the merchant acquirer expense for many debit card transactions, Global Payments Inc. plans to share “a significant amount of this” with its merchant clients, the company’s top executive told analyst during an Oct. 4 conference call to discuss fiscal first quarter earnings.

Citing strong execution across each of its businesses, Global Payments Inc. on Oct. 4 reported fiscal first-quarter revenue of $542.8 million, up 23.3% from $440.1 million during the same period last year.

S1 Corp. has accepted a sweetened takeover offer from ACI Worldwide after spurning ACI’s earlier bid, the company announced Oct. 3.

The global treasury-management market, in which banks help corporate clients with cash management, trade finance and global payments, is huge and lacks good self-service tools and automated processing. And this is leaving a wide open opportunity among such large financial competitors as Visa Inc. and U.S. Bancorp’s Syncada payments network, JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. to provide advanced treasury technology to corporate chief financial officers and treasury departments.

Fraud-prevention technology provider Kount Inc. is integrating with Zoovy Inc., a vendor of e-commerce software, to protect online merchants from fraud, the companies announced Sept. 30.

Considering a change in the way it will report future revenues, payment processor Planet Payment Inc. plans to delay release of its financial results for the first half of 2011, the company announced Sept. 29.

Considering a change in the way it will report future revenues, payment processor Planet Payment Inc. plans to delay release of its financial results for the first half of 2011, the company announced Sept. 29.

Euronet Worldwide Inc.’s epay division has signed an exclusive agreement to process prepaid mobile airtime transactions in the independent retail segment for Sprint Nextel Corp.’s Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile USA and Assurance Wireless no-contract wireless brands, the Leawood, Kan.-based company announced Sept. 29.

ACI Worldwide Inc. has extended its exchange offer for shares of S1 Corp. until Oct. 31.