ATM & Debit News articles from April 2006

ATM & Debit News archives from April 2006

Visa, MasterCard Fold Perks.
April 6, 2006... Visa PA joins MasterCard International in no longer requiring its debit card issuing members to support certain cardholder perks, including protection from stolen or damaged goods, travel accident insurance and product warranties. Visa said it...

Citibank In Big 7-Eleven Gulp.
April 6, 2006... Citibank has signed an ATM branding deal with 7-Eleven Stores Inc. The deal will have Citibank brand about 5,500 7-Eleven ATMs in 31 states, including about 1,000 of 7-Eleven's multi-function ATM kiosks, called Vcoms. Citibank hopes to save its...

Pulse Bank Win Shows Geography Still In Play.
April 6, 2006... The top EFT networks are now largely comparable in their interchange pricing structure. All have adopted tiered interchange rate structures based on retailer transaction volumes for PIN-debit transactions initiated by cardholders at...

Survey: ATM Shipments Slower Than In 2004.
April 6, 2006... Replacement ATMs may have propped up ATM demand in the U.S. for several years following a decline in demand for ATM deployments in new retail locations. But now, it appears that the ATM replacement market is flattening, according to a new ATM...

Co-Op Hopes Encore Merger Brings New CUs Into Network Fold.
April 6, 2006... Credit Unions tend to cooperate with each other in terms of sharing card transaction processing costs and ATM access. For example, local credit unions have a long history of allowing cardholders from other credit unions to use ATMs at no...

Poor-Performing, Former EFunds ATMs, Cash Thefts Plague TRM's Bottom Line.
April 6, 2006... The Portland, Ore-based TRM Corp. ATM independent sales organization hopes to stop its financial bleeding this year. TRM, in a late, end-of-the year filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, reported a net loss of $13.7 million for...

Georgia On Acquirer's Mind.
April 6, 2006... Official Payments Corp., acquirer of electronic government payments, announced that Georgia will begin accepting business payments made by credit and debit cards over the Web using Official Payments. Businesses will be able to pay Georgia's...

Aggarwal Jumps Prepaid Firms.
April 6, 2006... Anil Aggarwal resigned as CEO of TSYS Prepaid, Total System Services (TSYS) announced. TSYS bought Aggarwal's firm Clarity Payment Solutions in 2004 for $53 million and renamed it TSYS Prepaid. Aggarwal will become CEO of the Prepaid Media LLC,...

Co-Op, TRM Make Up.
April 13, 2006... The Co-Op Network of credit unions, after cutting its use of TRM Corp. ATMs for surcharge-free access to Co-Op cardholders, now has decided to expand its use of the machines. Ontario, Calif.-based Co-Op and Portland, Ore.-based TRM announced...

Chase Takes New York.
April 13, 2006... JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced a deal in which it will take over all of the Bank of New York's branches and ATMs and its debit card portfolio. In exchange, the Bank of New York will acquire New York-based Chase's corporate trust unit in a...

Merchants Feel Impact Of Tap-And-Go Cards.
April 13, 2006... As a handful of issuers put millions of contactless credit cards and debit cards into consumers' wallets, merchants who accept contactless cards are beginning to see an increasing number of the so-called "tap-and-go" card transactions. And this...

Consumers Tap Debit Cards For Web Shopping.
April 13, 2006... There are increasing signs that signature-based debit card transactions will permanently surpass credit card transactions over the Web. Visa USA already reports that the number of debit card transactions have surpassed credit card...

Credit Union Service Group, Others May Look To Courts In Fraud Case.
April 13, 2006... Dozens of credit unions are among those financial institutions picking up the tab so far for an apparent breach of PIN-debit data, which most observers now agree occurred at one or more retail locations. Fraudulent transactions charged to...

Some Don't Buy Debit Dominance.
April 13, 2006... Not all observers of Web-based payment trends agree with the notion that signature-based debit card payments will come to dominate purchases over the Web. Some analysts are skeptical of the fees that debit cards and credit cards carry for...

Discover Cards Can Feel Pulse.
April 13, 2006... Discover credit cards now can be used to withdraw cash at 350,000 ATMs that carry the Pulse network mark. Discover acquired Pulse last year. Jan Martin, vice president of marketing for Discover, said the use of the Pulse ATM mark increases...

VeriFone Buys Lipman.
April 13, 2006... VeriFone Holdings Inc. will buy Lipman Electronic Engineering Ltd. for $793 million based on VeriFone's closing stock price on April 7. The two are ranked among the top four point-of-sale terminal manufacturers. Lipman sold 851,627 terminals in...

Debit Ousts Cash As UK King.
April 20, 2006... Retail spending on debit cards exceeded the use of cash in the United Kingdom for the first time in 2005, according to APACS, the UK payments association. In 2005, UK consumers used debit cards to pay for $159 billion worth of goods and...

NYCE Surfing In Hawaii.
April 20, 2006... The Honolulu-based American Savings Bank is joining the NYCE network and will carry the NYCE mark on its ATMs and debit cards. The bank ranks as Hawaii's third-largest financial institution in terms of assets, according to the NYCE...

BB&T Taps Cardtronics ATMs.
April 20, 2006... The Cardtronics Inc. ATM ISO and Winston-Salem, N.C,-based BB&T Corp. have entered into a deal in which BB&T will brand 64 off-premise ATMs operated by Cardtronics in Walgreens drugstores in the Atlanta region. The deal calls for Cardtronics to...

Check Cashers Move Into Cards, Accounts.
April 20, 2006... Check-cashing stores are one of the most common destinations for consumers without bank accounts, or even minimal bank accounts, to cash paper checks. But with the proliferation of prepaid debit cards as an alternative to the paper payroll...

GAO Report Gives FEMA Cards Failing Grade.
April 20, 2006... For launching such a small prepaid debit card program nearly eight months ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, manages to still stir quite a bit controversy over it. Its ill-fated, prepaid debit card program following...

Bundled Communications Services Not Just For Consumer Market.
April 20, 2006... Bundled communications packages are all the rage among the largest U.S. telecommunications firms. These firms try to entice consumers to use an all-in-one package that include a broadband Internet service, telephone service and television...

All Shook Up About Elvis Cards.
April 20, 2006... Collectors of everything Elvis Presley certainly may be attracted to a new prepaid debit card that will feature the late rock 'n roll legend's white-suited image. But Elvis collectors are not the only potential purchasers of the new card to be...

Talbots Goes With Fifth Third.
April 20, 2006... Fifth Third Processing Solutions has signed a deal with Talbots apparel retailer to provide credit and debit card processing. Talbots operates 1,049 stores throughout the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, distributes millions of catalogs and...

VeriFone To Supply RBS Lynk.
April 20, 2006... Point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Holdings Inc. has signed a contract to supply terminals and related devices to RBS Lynk, a merchant-acquiring subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group based in the United Kingdom. Paul Rasori,...

FDC's Issuer Segment Declines.
April 27, 2006... First Data Corp. reported that defections from its Star debit network, including JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s move to Visa USA's Interlink network, was a leading cause of the firm's 5% decline in revenues in its issuing segment. Revenues in that...

Diebold, NCR ATM Earnings Off.
April 27, 2006... Diebold Inc. reports revenues of $623.7 million, up 16.5% in the first quarter. Net income for the first quarter was $12.7 million, down 54.5% from first-quarter 2005. Revenues in the firm's ATM unit, grew by only 3.9% during the quarter. NCR's...

Merchants Add Debit To Suit.
April 27, 2006... Merchants in the class-action lawsuit over interchange amended the suit to include signature-based, or offline, debit cards. The suit against Visa, MasterCard and several of the largest card issuers had focused on credit card interchange...

Ohio's Smart EBT Food Cards Are History.
April 27, 2006... The already small base of smart cards used to distribute government benefits. in the United States is getting even smaller. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which had been using chip cards since 1995 to distribute food-stamp...

Once Vital Network Link Is Fading Away.
April 27, 2006... Several small electronic funds transfer networks have for decades provided financial institutions on the geographic fringes a vital link with each other in switching ATM and debit card transactions. The Isle Share EFT network, for example,...

Triton Pumps Up Its Euro Business, Acquiring ISOs And A Supply Chain.
April 27, 2006... Cash dispenser makers in the U.S. traditionally have stayed out of processing transactions and servicing the machines they sell in the U.S. But Triton, the Long Beach, Miss.-based ATM vendor, sees processing and maintenance opportunities...

Judgement Gives ACS Green Light.
April 27, 2006... Ohio's conversion from a smart card-based electronic benefits transfer program to a magnetic stripe-based program will not be slowed by a lawsuit brought by two unsuccessful bidders. The unsuccessful bidders for the Ohio EBT contract,...

Global Axcess ISO Sees Loss.
April 27, 2006... Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.-based Global Axcess Corp., which operates the Nationwide Money ISO, says it now anticipates a net income loss for its last fiscal year ending Dec. 31. The company previously projected net income of between $100,000 and a...

NFL Prospect Plays In Prepaid.
April 27, 2006... Former University of Texas football standout Vince Young, who is expected to be a top NFL draft pick this week, is endorsing the All-Access prepaid debit card distributed by NetSpend Corp. Young's image will appear on the card, which is sold...