ATM & Debit News articles from April 2003

ATM & Debit News archives from April 2003

Concord Lowers Revenues.
April 3, 2003... Concord EFS Inc., the Memphis, Tenn.-based electronic funds transfer processor and network owner, has cut its 2002 revenue by 10% because of an accounting change, a Concord spokesperson says. The change subtracts interchange-fee revenue...

Credit Union Joins ATM Nat'l.
April 3, 2003... Pentagon Federal Credit Union, which has 500,000 debit cardholders, has joined ATM National Inc., which targets financial institutions that want to offer their cardholders surcharge-free access to its national Allpoint network of 23,000 ATMs....

First Data, Concord Plan To Merge In A $7 Billion Stock Deal.
April 3, 2003... The ever-shrinking U.S. electronic funds transfer market is about to become even smaller. Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data Corp. April 2 announced a definitive agreement to merge in an all-stock transaction with Concord EFS Inc., the...

Debate Heats Up Over PIN-Based POS Surcharging.
April 3, 2003... New rules set by Concord EFS Inc.'s Star electronic funds transfer network could affect existing merchants' surcharging policies for PIN-based debit purchases as well as other retailers that might be considering the surcharge route. ...

MasterCard Gets Serious With Maestro As Interchange Rates Get Overhaul.
April 3, 2003... MasterCard International's debit MasterCard product has only about a 20% share of the U.S. signature-based debit market in terms of overall transaction volume. That share size, though, is immense compared with the minuscule U.S. market share...

Star's Convenience Fee Policy.
April 3, 2003... Operating Rule 2.34-A: "Convenience fees and rebates shall be allowed within the Star network on a nondiscriminatory basis. Therefore, an acquirer member who applies a convenience fee or rebate to any Star transaction must apply the same amount...

Judge Says No To Separate Trial For MasterCard.
April 3, 2003... U.S. District Judge John Gleeson April 1 denied a motion by Visa U.S.A. and MasterCard International to dismiss the class-action lawsuit led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and filed in October 1996. The lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial April 28 in...

Maestro Interchange Rates.
April 3, 2003... Category Rate Min. Fee Max. Fee Supermarket/Warehouse 17cents 17cents 17cents C-Store 0.75% 11cents 25cents All Other 0.5%+7cents 11cents 29cents Cash...

Genpass Hires Gallagher.
April 3, 2003... Genpass Inc. has hired John N. Gallagher as senior vice president of card services. Gallagher will be responsible for payroll card sales to large companies and supermarket chains. He joined Fort Washington, Pa.-based-based Genpass from VeriFone...

EFunds Names New Officer.
April 3, 2003... Scottsdale, Ariz.-based eFunds Corp. has named David McCrary as vice president of national sales for its ATM Solutions division. McCrary, who previously was senior vice president of ATM business development at Bank of America Corp., helped BofA...

Associations Lose In Fee Ruling.
April 10, 2003... Visa International and MasterCard International plan to appeal California Superior Court Judge Ronald Sabraw's April 8 decision ordering them to refund to cardholders more than $800 million in currency-exchange fees. Sabraw ruled that the card...

Check Cards Used More Online.
April 10, 2003... New Visa U.S.A. data suggest signature-based debit cards are gaining in popularity among Internet shoppers. More than 25%-$11 billion-of the $42.5 billion consumers spent online last year with Visa-branded cards was conducted with a Visa check...

Banks Once Again Turn To ATMs To Reduce Costs.
April 10, 2003... A few years ago, the prospect of more ATMs being used to sell anything from movie tickets to ski-lift vouchers seemed destined for success. Many of the largest financial-institution ATM owners have experimented with a variety of ATM commerce...

First Data/Concord ATM Driving Would Dominate Market.
April 10, 2003... As with most mergers among corporate giants, the prospects that a $7 billion buyout of Concord EFS Inc. by the Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data Corp. will be as successful as promoters hope will be unclear for some time. Though both...

New York Company, Processor Offer A Prepaid Card For Consumers In Debt.
April 10, 2003... Most financial institutions put little effort in trying to market to individuals with poor credit histories because when they do embrace them, many wind up costing them money. As a result, few such individuals are issued debit cards, especially...

Demand For ATM Spending.
April 10, 2003... Use Considering Not Considering Check Acceptance 15 3 Voice Enabling 12 6 Web Enabling 11 7 Advertising/Video 7 11 ...

Check Casher Adds Prepaid Card To Its Service Offerings.
April 10, 2003... Millions of consumers today cash checks at check-cashing stores, which offer convenience and a variety of financial-service products. Such locations, though, are getting pressure from competitors who sell prepaid debit cards designed to keep...

A Merged Concord/First Data.
April 10, 2003... ATM Driving Contracts 106,000 PIN Debit Switch Volume 7.3 billion* Network Switch Market Share 61.3% Source: First Data, Concord, ATM&Debit News. *Annualized total based on the NYCE and Star networks' switch volumes listed...

Abanco Signs Terminal Deal.
April 10, 2003... Abanco International LLC, a Rosemont, Ill.-based independent sales organization, has awarded a $16 million payment-terminal contract to Hypercom Corp., a Phoenix-based terminal maker. The contract represents the first dealings between the two...

EFunds Signs First VbyV Client.
April 10, 2003... ATM operator and electronic funds transfer transaction processor eFunds Corp. says it signed Nevada Federal Credit Union to be its first client using the Verified by Visa authentication system for Internet purchases. Nevada Federal has 60,000...

Soldiers' Families Get A Break.
April 17, 2003... Several banks are waiving some fees, including ATM and debit card charges, for soldiers and their families. The banks hope to make life easier for the families of hundreds of thousands of soldiers being sent overseas to fight in the Middle...

Vcoms Support Bill Payment.
April 17, 2003... Verizon Communications Corp. customers can now pay their land-based and wireless telephone bills and order other phone services at Dallas-based 7-Eleven Stores Inc.'s Vcom multifunction ATMs. Verizon and 7-Eleven announced April 8 that 400...

Bank Expands ATM Rollout.
April 17, 2003... Northwest Savings Bank Corp. in Warren, Pa., is expanding its ATM relationship with the Kwik Fill/Red Apple food-store chain, also based in Warren. Northwest will deploy bank-branded ATMs in 23 additional Kwik Fill stores by May 31, bringing...

EFTA Task Force To Suggest Fraud Controls For ATMs.
April 17, 2003... Schemes to steal cash or debit cardholder information from ATMs have been around virtually as long as the machines themselves. But with the widespread availability of super-fast personal computers to savvy mobsters and fears of money laundering...

Visa, MasterCard To Appeal Ruling, But Fee Disclosures May Change.
April 17, 2003... Visa U.S.A and MasterCard International say they plan to appeal a recent California court ruling ordering them to reimburse an estimated $800 million to cardholders charged currency-conversion fees when traveling overseas. The plaintiff in the...

Terminal Makers Tap Into Speed Of IP Broadband.
April 17, 2003... Over the past couple of years, a number of companies have begun to offer merchants and processors products that enable dial-up payment terminals to tie into a retailer's faster, always-on Internet-protocol connection used for Web access and for...

Anti-Fraud Recommendations.
April 17, 2003... * Use encrypting PIN pad standard on ATMs. * Use electronic "fingerprints" on debit cards. * Conduct background checks on potential ATM operators. * Ask ATM service providers and processors to produce periodic audits. Source:...

Bank Fee Waivers Seen As Goodwill Move To Soldiers.
April 17, 2003... Military personnel have enough to worry about with a war going on in the Middle East. So some financial institutions hope waiving some banking fees for military families will generate one less financial hassle and promote good will among their...

Key Facts About The Lawsuit.
April 17, 2003... Defendants: Visa U.S.A., MasterCard International Venue: California Superior Court Issue: Disclosure of Currency Conversion Fee Ruling: Defendants must refund $800 million to eligible affected cardholders. ...

Ingenico, 7-Eleven Strike Deal.
April 17, 2003... Dallas-based 7-Eleven Stores Inc. plans to deploy in 5,300 of its convenience stores Ingenico Inc. touch-screen eN-Touch 1000 point-of-sale terminals. Financial terms were not disclosed. As part of the deal, 7-Eleven will use Ingenico's...

Sept. 30 CISP Deadline Is Set.
April 17, 2003... Visa U.S.A.'s grace period to meet the database-security standards of its Cardholder Information Security Program will end Sept. 30, says Tom Fowler, Visa vice president. The program initially set a May 1, 2001, compliance deadline. CISP aims...

Fraud Complaints Are Rising.
April 24, 2003... Credit and debit card fraud accounted for nearly 12% of complaints filed last year with the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, a joint-operation of the National White Collar Crime Center and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Internet fraud...

ATMs Cash Refund Checks.
April 24, 2003... The New York City-based Jackson Hewitt Inc. tax-preparation firm is using Houston-based BVIG Financial LLC to deploy and manage ATMs that can cash tax-refund checks in Jackson Hewitt offices. Jackson Hewitt operates 4,100 offices, and the ATM...

New ATM Network Entices Issuers With No Surcharges.
April 24, 2003... The use of selective-surcharge groups provides a means by which small financial institutions can compete with larger competitors that can offer customers free use of perhaps thousands of ATMs. Most such groups share surcharge-free use of ATMs...

Fiserv To Combine 3 Networks, But Will Bide Its Time.
April 24, 2003... When Fiserv Inc. in December acquired EDS Corp.'s Consumer Network Services processing unit and its three electronic funds transfer networks, it provided the Brookfield, Wis.-based financial-services company with more leverage to compete for...

Credit Union Interest Begins To Grow In Datacard's Instant-Issuance System.
April 24, 2003... In 1999, Datacard Group rolled out the first desktop system for instantly issuing signature-based debit cards in branches. At the time, officials at the Minnetonka, Minn.-based company thought financial institutions would embrace the Visa- and...

Key Facts About ATM National.
April 24, 2003... Headquarters: Washington, D.C. Network Mark: Allpoint Surcharge-Free ATMs: 23,000 Startup Date: April 2 Major Client: Pentagon Federal C.U. Source: ATM National. Copyright 2003 Thomson Media Inc. All...

ThruComm May Be Done, But Some Of Its Services Go On.
April 24, 2003... The need for new forms of telecommunications to serve growing niche markets for wireless electronic funds transfer products is getting stronger. Thousands of cabs in Chicago, for example, are expected to be equipped with wireless point-of-sale...

ThruComm Highlights.
April 24, 2003... 2000 - ThruComm Inc. provides wireless communications for 600 Firstar ATMs. 2000 - Marconi Communications Inc. invests up to $70 million in ThruComm's nationwide, debit-based cellular service. 2001 - Dallas-based EFT processor...

Balajke Named ETA Director.
April 24, 2003... The Electronic Transactions Association, which held its Annual Meeting & Expo recently in Las Vegas, has named Carla Balajke executive director. Balajke, a 20-year veteran in the not-for-profit arena, will start May 1. The ETA will officially...

Diebold Doing Better In 2003.
April 24, 2003... Diebold Inc., the North Canton, Ohio-based ATM manufacturer, is having a better year so far than last year. Diebold announced a first-quarter profit of $25.9 million compared with a loss of $6.6 million in the first quarter of 2002. Revenue was...