Payment processing

The Obama administration reportedly is weighing complaints from U.S. payments companies that China is violating trade rules by shutting them out of its $723 billion payment-processing market, trade representative Ron Kirk said Friday.

About 20% of approximately 15,000 merchants in the Solveras Payment Solutions portfolio thus far have been notified as part of a program designed to bring them into compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, the Arlington, Va.-based independent sales organization says. The initiative began in late February.

First National Bank in Johannesburg has announced an alliance with PayPal Inc. to make it easier to use the eBay Inc. unit's system in South Africa.

BOSTON – A 28-year-old college dropout who became the world’s biggest credit card hacker on Thursday was sentenced to 20 years in prison for stealing millions of credit union and bank account records from TJX Cos., BJ’s Wholesale Club, Office Max, Dave & Busters, Barnes & Noble and a string of other companies – even as he was working as a $75,000-a-year undercover informant for the U.S. government in identity theft cases.

WorldNet TPS plans to use First Atlantic Commerce’s fraud-prevention services to further protect its online merchants from card-not-present fraud in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Europe, the companies announced this week. First Atlantic Commerce, a payment gateway and risk-management services provider, offers 3-D Secure and other customized consumer risk services in Europe and in the Asia Pacific and Latin American regions.

An Internal Revenue Service initiative announced earlier this month could spur independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers to assess how they classify their staffs, Holli Hart Targan, president of the Electronic Transactions Association, noted at the Southeast Acquirers Association conference this week in Atlanta.

FrontStream Payments Inc. will double its annual transaction-processing volume to $2 billion following last week’s acquisition of Fast Transact Inc., a Lacey, Wash.-based ISO, FrontStream CEO Emmet Seibels tells ISO&Agent Weekly.

Residuals are a standard form of payments revenue for ISOs and sales agents, but the weak economy, decreased transaction volumes and margin compression are making it more difficult for individuals to subsist on residual income alone. As some agents’ residuals grow tenuous, more salespeople are expressing interest in up-front revenue to bolster their incomes.

Compliance among small merchants with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard remains relatively low, but ISOs may be able to increase compliance rates in their portfolios by launching multifaceted campaigns, some industry insiders suggest.

Hancock Fabric Inc. has replaced every VeriFone Inc. 2000 PIN pad it deploys with new VeriFone MX850 terminals, according to Robert W. Driskell, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer. The company made the move after thieves replaced some PIN pads with fakes one (see story).

An Internal Revenue Service initiative announced earlier this month could spur independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers to assess how they classify their staffs, Holli Hart Targan, president of the Electronic Transactions Association, noted at the Southeast Acquirers Association conference this week in Atlanta.

How important is innovation to the business of banking today? The government appears to believe that financial innovations are at least partly to blame for the recent economic crisis, and to some degree this is true. Were it not for powerful secondary markets and instruments like mortgage-backed securities and CDOs, we may well have avoided the real estate bubble in the first place, leaving nothing to burst.

Online-software provider UpClick last week announced an agreement with payment-service provider GlobalCollect BV. The collaboration will enable UpClick to add payment methods to its platform as it expands internationally.

Gift and loyalty services company SparkBase says its deal announced this week with Apriva will expand the potential number of merchants that can accept SparkBase products.

Thieves stole an undisclosed number of PIN pads from Hancock Fabrics Inc. stores, replacing them with counterfeit terminals that illegally captured customer card data. Store officials disclosed the thefts from an undisclosed number of its 264 stores in 37 states earlier this month. Executives believe the thefts occurred in August and September last year.

Fifth Third Processing Solutions LLC later this year will roll out an advanced payment-data encryption technology platform for its merchant clients developed in conjunction with Voltage Security Inc., the processor said on Thursday.

From the March 2010 issue of ISO&Agent.

Chase Paymentech LLC this week announced plans to extend its offer of fraud-detection services for card-not-present transactions to all of its merchant customers later this year. The Dallas-based processor will integrate Kount Inc.’s fraud-detection services so merchants of all sizes may use them without requiring a separate contract with Boise, Idaho-based Kount.

USA Technologies Inc. said Thursday that more than 71,000 vending machines and other self-serve systems are now linked to its payments network.

MoneyGram International Inc. said Thursday it has hired Juan Agualimpia as a senior vice president and its chief marketing officer to oversee the company's global branding and marketing efforts.