ATM & Debit News articles from October 2006

ATM & Debit News archives from October 2006

Visa, BofA Renew Card Deal.
October 5, 2006... Bank of America and Visa USA announced Monday they have renewed their longstanding card-issuing partnership through 2011. The agreement maintains BofA's current status as issuer of the most Visa-branded payment cards. The agreement is...

PIN-Debit Fraud Tool Planned.
October 5, 2006... MasterCard Worldwide this week announced a fraud-detection product designed to enhance the security of PIN-debit purchases and ATM transactions. Called MasterCard Online Fraud Monitor, the service uses a sophisticated risk-scoring model to...

More Issuers Are Tying Cards To A Single Brand.
October 5, 2006... More debit card issuers are processing their PIN-debit card transactions through Visa USA and MasterCard Worldwide, reversing issuers' long-standing policies of not putting all their debit product support behind one brand. The change in...

Contactless Cards Gain Yardage With More NFL Teams.
October 5, 2006... The National Football League opened its regular season in September with more team stadiums accepting contactless payments. The home fields of the Arizona Cardinals and Chicago Bears joined seven other stadiums that allow fans to conduct the...

Tranax Urges ISOs To Change ATM Passwords Following Thefts.
October 5, 2006... In September, someone who had an unchanged master password for a Tranax Mini-Bank 1500 ATM accessed the machine at a Virginia Beach, Va., store, and programmed it to dispense $20 bills instead of $5 bills. He used a prepaid debit card to get...

Debit Cards Makes Church Giving Divine.
October 5, 2006... Debit card transaction growth has shot into the heavens, so to speak. So it probably should come as no surprise that a church has developed a kiosk that enables parishioners to use debit cards to make donations. Stevens Creek Community...

Efmark-Bantek Is Now Pendum.
October 5, 2006... Efmark Bantek, an ATM-servicing company created from the merger earlier this year of Efmark Premium Armored and Bantek West, this week changed its name to Pendum Inc., effective immediately. The name comes from the Latin words pendo for "value"...

Fiserv Adds Fraud Protections.
October 5, 2006... Fiserv Inc. says it will begin delivering Fair Isaac's CardAlert Fraud Manager service to Canadian financial institutions for cardholder transactions conducted in the United States through Fiserv's Accel/Exchange Network, which switches...

PNC Expands ATM Network.
October 12, 2006... PNC Financial Services Group Inc. this week announced that it will purchase Mercantile Bankshares Corp., a deal that will expand PNC's ATM network. Baltimore-based Mercantile deploys 250 ATMs at its 240 branches Maryland, Northern Virginia,...

Wawa To Test Debitman Card.
October 12, 2006... Wawa Inc., a Wawa, Pa., convenience-store chain, later this month will distribute the Wawa Check Card, a rebate card, as part of a three-month test at 29 of its stores with Debitman Card Inc. Debitman operates the Retailers Network, a PIN-debit...

Industry Looks To Smooth Health Card Bumps.
October 12, 2006... Debit cards make it easier than cash and checks for users of employer-managed flexible spending accounts and health reimbursement arrangements to purchase qualified medical and health care products. But substantiating over-the-counter items at...

Visa Announces Plans to Conduct Own Stock IPO.
October 12, 2006... Visa yesterday announced a global restructuring that will lead to an initial public offering of company stock in 12 to 18 months, a move designed to prevent the card association's bank owners from being targets of merchant class-action lawsuits...

Tax Preparers Use Debit Experiences To Fine Tune Their Prepaid Initiatives.
October 12, 2006... Tax-preparation firms H&R Block Inc. and Jackson-Hewitt Inc. have duked it out in recent years trying to come up with convenient ways to enable underbanked customers to deposit income-tax refunds directly into prepaid card accounts. After...

Canadian Tax Firm Plans To Offer Debit Cards, Too.
October 12, 2006... Canada's tax-preparation companies also are starting to roll out debit card initiatives. Liberty Tax Services, Canada's No. 2 tax-preparation firm, will begin to offer its customers the option of having their tax refunds deposited directly...

Saylent Licenses Software.
October 12, 2006... Alpine Bank has licensed Saylent Technologies Inc.'s Y-Debit Solutions software to improve the management and profitability of the bank's debit card program, says Tyson Nargassans, Saylent president. Alpine Bank licensed two of Y-Debit's...

Plastic Production Grows.
October 12, 2006... Nearly 15 billion plastic payment cards were manufactured worldwide in 2005, says the International Card Manufacturers Association. The manufacture of 14.7 billion cards, including magnetic stripe, chip-embedded and combination cards enabling...

First Data Joins Interac.
October 19, 2006... First Data International announced that it has joined the Interac Association, Canada's debit card payments network. First Data International, part of First Data Corp., says its membership in Toronto-based Interac will allow First Data's...

Diebold Sells ATMs To A Bank.
October 19, 2006... Diebold Integrated Services has sold Cross Keys Bank five ATMs, and Diebold has signed an agreement to manage them, says Keith Lewis, director of global marketing for software and services. In addition to managing the new ATMs, Diebold also...

Credit Unions ATM Volume Tops Banks'.
October 19, 2006... Credit unions tend to be much smaller than most banks, and they deploy relatively few ATMs. But members of credit unions tend to use their institutions' machines more often than do banks' customers, new study data show. In 2005, on-premise...

San Francisco Banks On Debit To Help Unbanked.
October 19, 2006... Twelve San Francisco-area financial institutions are using debit card-based accounts to encourage the city's unbanked to form banking relationships so they can avoid using pay-day loan stores and check-cashing services that charge high fees....

Report: Open-Loop Prepaid Cards Show Dramatic Year Over Year Growth.
October 19, 2006... The number of network-branded prepaid cards more than doubled to 45.7 million in 2005 from 21 million in 2004, and the value on those cards grew 56%, to $14.1 billion from just more than $9 billion, according to a recent report by Mercator...

Comdata Details Marketing Campaign.
October 19, 2006... Comdata Corp., a wholly owned transaction-processing subsidiary of Ceridian Corp., last week announced a new marketing campaign that highlights the rebranding of all of its subsidiaries to the Comdata brand. Among the subsidiaries are prepaid...

Cardtronics Signs Deal.
October 19, 2006... Cardtronics Mexico, a Cardtronics Inc. subsidiary, has signed an agreement with OXXO, a convenience store operator in Mexico. According to the companies' multi-year agreement, Cardtronics Mexico will place ATMs in OXXO stores throughout Mexico....

PSCU Will Provide Processing.
October 19, 2006... PSCU Financial Services signed a five-year agreement to process signature debit cards for Contra Costa Federal Credit Union in Martinez, Calif. The credit union will offer PSCU's gift cards during the holidays. (c) 2006 ATM&Debit News and...

BofA Reports Debit Gains.
October 26, 2006... Bank of America last week reported debit card income for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 of $502 million, up 24% from a year earlier. The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank claims it controls 16% of the debit card transaction market, twice as much as...

Contactless Cards Accessed.
October 26, 2006... Researchers say they have skimmed data from contactless cards in a lab using relatively inexpensive equipment, raising questions about whether the payment devices are secure. Kevin Fu, a computer science professor at the University of...

Debit Is Putting Jobless Checks Out Of Work.
October 26, 2006... The New York Department of Labor is saving trees and helping its unemployed. It also is saving millions in jobless-related expenses. The agency, which pays unemployment compensation to the state's out-of-work residents, in September began...

Grocers' Anger Grows Over Rising Interchange Costs.
October 26, 2006... Growing numbers of shoppers are paying for their groceries with debit cards. But supermarkets, which have accepted debit and credit cards for nearly two decades, are angrier than ever over the interchange they pay to accept cards. The Food...

Multi-Purpose Kiosks Seen As A Means To Revitalize A Flat ATM Market.
October 26, 2006... ATMs, which have become less profitable as transaction volumes have flattened but still provide a key banking service to attract and retain customers, are beginning to morph into multipurpose kiosks. And proponents see the trend as one that may...

BofA ATMs Take Take Debit Cards, Sell Credit Cards.
October 26, 2006... Bank of America, the nation's leading ATM deployer, has found a new use for some of its ATMs: offering credit cards to prequalified customers. When a BofA customer does not respond to a mailed credit card offer, the same offer appears on...

NCR's ATM Sales Fall.
October 26, 2006... NCR Corp. today said its Financial Self Service business, which includes ATMs, generated third-quarter operating income of $43 million, down 28% from $60 million for the same three-month period last year. Revenues for the unit were $349...

Star Parent Reports Figures.
October 26, 2006... First Data Financial Institution Services, which includes Star, the PIN-debit network, Tuesday reported a third-quarter operating profit $96.3 million, down 2% from last year. Revenues were $455.2 million, down 4% from $474.3 million in 2005's...