ATM & Debit News articles from June 2006

ATM & Debit News archives from June 2006

Fiserv PIN Switch In Web Pilot.
June 8, 2006... Pay By Touch's ATM Direct division plans to launch an online PIN-debit payment system that will use Fiserv's Accel/Exchange PIN-debit network for authorizations. The J. Paul Co., a promotional products provider, will pilot the system beginning...

Provident Bank In MoneyPass.
June 8, 2006... Baltimore-based Provident Bank has signed a deal with Genpass Inc., a subsidiary of U.S. Bank, to use Genpass's MoneyPass surcharge-free ATM network. Provident's debit cardholders will have fee-free access to 10,000 MoneyPass-branded ATMs....

Rewards Morph Into Gift Cards.
June 8, 2006... U.S. Bank and the Cabela's outdoor equipment retailer will offer a new debit rewards program that provides rewards in the form of Cabela's gift cards. U.S. Bank will issue a Visa-branded Cabela's check card that gives cardholders one point for...

Smaller Networks Find Ways To Stay Relevant.
June 8, 2006... Not all smaller EFT networks are throwing in the towel to a handful of larger networks that now handle most of the transaction volume on ATMs and PIN-debit terminals at point-of-sale locations. Smaller networks and those that offer...

BlueCross Bank Sees Itself Among Largest Issuers.
June 8, 2006... Consumers will put billions of pretax payroll dollars into health savings accounts in the next few years to cover out-of-pocket expenses connected to high-deductible health insurance plans, experts agree. Boston-based Celent Communications Inc....

Visa To Offer Its Own Fraud Detection For Plus ATM Network Transactions.
June 8, 2006... In 1982, 26 banks formed an ATM network so all those banks could authorize ATM transactions initiated by each others' ATM cardholders. That network evolved into the global Plus ATM network, now owned by Visa USA, which purchased Plus in...

Rewards Service Takes To The Web.
June 8, 2006... Financial institutions have come a long way from handing out free toasters with new checking accounts. A depositor, it seems, is now more likely to be offered a point-based reward attached to a debit card than a toaster. A recent Mercator...

Tier's Troubles Pile Up.
June 8, 2006... Tier Technologies Inc., a Reston, Va.-based acquirer of electronic payments to government agencies, says it has received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for documents related to financial reporting and personnel...

Clarification.(Correction notice)
June 8, 2006... An article in the May 25 edition of ATM&Debit News incorrectly stated that Visa USA CEO John Coghlan planned to loosen Visa's encryption security rules for PIN debit transactions at point-of-sale locations. (c) 2006 ATM&Debit News and...

Co-Op Tries Rewards Gambit.
June 15, 2006... Co-Op Financial Services, formerly called the Co-Op Network, is launching a debit card rewards platform for its nearly 2,000 member credit unions. Called Co-Op Member Rewards, the new platform will be available in the third quarter of this...

MasterCard Execs Buy In.
June 15, 2006... MasterCard Inc. CEO Robert Selander leads the list of insider ownership of MasterCard stock since MasterCard pulled the trigger on its initial public offering on May 25. Selander now holds 407,341 shares of MasterCard stock at a $39 price per...

Cardtronics, Chase In ATM Deal.
June 15, 2006... Houston-based Cardtronics Inc. ATM independent sales organization has struck a deal with JPMorgan Chase & Co. for Chase to brand 317 Cardtronics ATMs in Walgreen drugstores in Florida. The deal will increase to 387, from 70 ATMs, that Chase...

U.S. Bank Sticks By Its Card Remittances.
June 15, 2006... Debit card-based remittance products have a spotty record at best. Indeed, some issuers have abandoned the concept of using prepaid debit cards to break into the remittance business dominated by Western Union, which parent company First Data...

PIN Prompts Changing Payment Mix.
June 15, 2006... Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Radio Shack compete with each other when it comes to selling electronic products. But these chains have one thing in common at the checkout counter: They all prompt customers to tap in a PIN when paying with a debit card,...

ATM Check Imaging May Finally Make Debut In The Mainstream.
June 15, 2006... It looks as though the concept of imaging checks at ATMs, and getting rid of ATM deposit envelopes, is finally moving beyond the testing and pilot stage among a handful of banks, after years of trial and error. San Francisco-based Wells...

Will Small Merchants Invest In PINS?
June 15, 2006... The trend toward prompting customers to use PINs instead of signatures for payment card purchases appears to have swept many of the largest merchant chains. These merchants have invested millions of dollars in PINpads and in computer...

Poll: ATM Fraud Being Noticed.
June 15, 2006... A poll conducted in late April by Harris Interactive for NCR Corp. found that more than 37% of adults who have a bank account are more concerned than they used to be about using ATMs. Many of the same respondents, however, did not indicate they...

Clarification.(Correction notice)
June 15, 2006... A May 25 ATM survey in ATM&Debit News should have stated that TRM Corp.'s 2005 U.S. ATM totals stood at 15,107 instead of a larger, global ATM total stated in the survey. (c) 2006 ATM&Debit News and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved....

BofA California Dreamin'.
June 22, 2006... California plans to make child-support payments available this summer on prepaid Visa cards issued by Bank of America, according to Visa. The cheapest disbursement method is typically a direct deposit into the recipient's bank account. But many...

Chase Blinks With Debit Cards.
June 22, 2006... Chase Bank has launched its first contactless debit card, mailing 1.8 million of its Visa blink cards to consumers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the bank announced. The cards replace 1.8 million mag-stripe-based Visa cards. Mailing...

Prepaid Debit To Get Its Own National Promos.
June 22, 2006... MasterCard Inc. and Visa USA both spend millions each year to promote debit card use via national ad campaigns. Now they are getting ready to launch ad campaigns targeting purchasers and users of their branded prepaid debit cards. Todd...

Firms Report Sizzling Sales Of Fraud Software.
June 22, 2006... Fraud-prevention software sales are soaring worldwide along with reports of fraudulent transactions using the PIN function on debit cards. Debit card issuers, it seems, are beefing up their electronic security to fight back against...

GAO Study Questions Payments Made To Chase For FEMA Relief Cards.
June 22, 2006... A new report picking apart failures with the ill-fated, prepaid debit cards issued briefly by the Federal Emergency Management Agency last year was critical not just of FEMA, but also of card issuer JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chase, issuer of...

Two Independent Sales Organizations See Investor Confidence Shaken.
June 22, 2006... Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.-based Global Axcess Corp., which owns the top-10 ATM independent sales organization, Nationwide Money Services, is perplexed about steep drops in its stock price. "We have no specific knowledge as to why our share...

Season Of Contract Renewals.
June 22, 2006... The Internal Revenue Service has renewed a yearly contract with Official Payments Corp. to process federal tax payments made with credit cards and signature debit cards. The Golden 1 credit union has renewed its contract with First Data Corp....

NetBank Expands Into Prepaid.
June 22, 2006... NetBank Inc., the third-largest independent ATM deployer in the U.S. with 9,700 ATMs under contract, is creating a separate division to sell prepaid debit cards and card-processing services. (c) 2006 ATM&Debit News and SourceMedia, Inc. All...

Hartford Rolls Out Claims Card.
June 29, 2006... The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. will offer a prepaid debit card for customers to pay for basic supplies in an emergency. The cards, to be issued by JPMorgan Chase, will be issued to customers for "day-to-day living essentials," such...

It's All Image For BofA ATMs.
June 29, 2006... Bank of America, which has been testing check imaging at 60-ATMs, plans to roll out check imaging on 1,500 ATMs by the end of 2006. The plan is to give BofA customers "immediate credit" for funds deposited via cash at ATMs and same-day credit...

U.S. Bank Uses Its MoneyPass.
June 29, 2006... U.S. Bank has joined the MoneyPass surcharge-free ATM network. MoneyPass, whose parent Genpass is owned by the bank, expands customer access to free ATMs from 5,000 U.S. Bank ATMs to 12,000. Some cardholders will be charged a "foreign" fee to...

Thrift Regulators Oppose States On Prepaid Laws.
June 29, 2006... State and federal courts years ago ruled that federal regulatory bodies, including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, have the sole authority, and not states, to regulate ATM surcharge policies...

Washington Mutual No-Fee Promotion Catching On With Other Banks.
June 29, 2006... Banks that only operated over the Web have largely disappeared. But their legacy of reimbursing customers for various ATM fees to make up for having few or no ATMs of their own lives on. Numerous banks have recently launched promotional...

Networks Wary Of Spiking Interchange Rates.
June 29, 2006... For some years now, industry observers have been predicting higher interchange rates for PIN-debit transactions. They suggest that PIN-debit interchange will more resemble higher interchange merchant acquirers pay card issuers for signature...

How Regional Shared Network Interchange Compares.
June 29, 2006... Network Withdrawal Inquiry Deposit Transfer 2006 POS 2005 POS Star 46cents-54cents 20cents-25cents $2-$2.25 20cents-25cents 60cents(a) 60cents NYCE 38cents-52cents 25cents...

How Regional Shared Network Pricing Varies.
June 29, 2006... 2006 ATM 2005 ATM 2006 POS 2005 POS Membership Monthly/Annual Switch Switch Switch Switch Fee Fee Fee Fee Fee Fee Network Star 3cents-8cents ...

Prepaid Firm Gets Game.
June 29, 2006... Domino's Pizza and the NetSpend prepaid debit card distributor will offer a sweepstakes targeting Hispanic consumers. The sweepstakes, called Promo DomiGOL, is a "scratch-and-win" card game distributed by domino's in Los Angeles via pizza...

TSYS, MoneyGram Reloaded.
June 29, 2006... TSYS Prepaid announced that network-branded prepaid cards that it processes will be instantly reloadable at 26,000 MoneyGram International Inc. locations in the U.S. in a deal with the remittance firm. (c) 2006 ATM&Debit News and...