Electronic Payments Week articles from October 2005

Electronic Payments Week archives from October 2005

Fidelity National Financial Stepping Out Smartly.
October 4, 2005... William Foley II has pulled off a neat trick. Foley, chairman and chief executive of Fidelity National Financial Corp., tried for a year to spin off his Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) unit into a public company, before...

FinCEN Hacked; Its QuikNews Email Service Is Shuttered.
October 4, 2005... FinCEN's QuikNews email system was hacked Friday, Sept. 23, and a mass mailing opposing America's presence in Iraq was sent to the service's mailing list. The service was shut down permanently the following Monday. For FinCEN, short for...

CardSystems to CyberSource Changeover Delayed by Visa.
October 4, 2005... Visa USA says it's postponed cutting off CardSystems Inc. for three months to allow its deal with CyberSource Corp. to close, according to reports. The CyberSource deal (see Electronic Payments Week, Sept. 27) is contingent on undisclosed...

Another Class Action Suit Filed Against Credit Cards.
October 4, 2005... Another group of merchants has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard. In this lawsuit, filed Sept. 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the merchant groups charge the credit card...

Credit Card Delinquencies Rise.
October 4, 2005... As the accompanying chart from the American Banker's Association shows, credit card delinquencies are rising, and the ABA says they're increasing in tandem with most other measurements of consumer debt. "The last two quarters have not...

Who's Who.
October 4, 2005... * Peter B. Ellwood joined the board of First Data Corp., replacing Bernard L. Schwartz, who resigned after serving on the board since 1992. Ellwood is former group chief executive officer at Lloyds TSB. Schwartz is chairman and chief...

Are Payment Cards Headed for a Mid-Life Crisis?
October 4, 2005... The credit card model is aging and needs to grab the next wave of the industry, or it faces a bleak future, says David S. Evans, founder of Market Platform Dynamics Inc. "The big dangers to the model could also be the big solutions to...

New to Market.
October 4, 2005... * American Express Co. says that Puerto Rican bank holding company Oriental Financial Group Inc., with $7.2 billion in assets, will be the first Puerto Rican bank to offer American Express green and gold cards to its customers. Oriental will...

The Checklist.
October 4, 2005... Euronet Worldwide, Inc. [EEFT] This payments provider says it's issuing $155 million of unsecured, subordinated convertible debentures, due in 2025 and paying 3.5 percent. This is $30 million more than originally announced. Included in...

NACHA Adopts Code To Boost Straight-Through Processing.
October 11, 2005... The effort to bring business-to-business payments into the digital age got a shot in the arm last week when NACHA adopted the universal payment identification code (UPIC) being promoted by The Clearing House Payments Co.'s Electronic...

Congress Wades Gingerly Into Turbulent Interchange Wars.
October 11, 2005... In the first signs that driving down interchange through litigation may be replaced by legislation, the House of Representatives has directed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate credit card fees. The directive, 34 words...

More Interchange Lawsuits Filed.
October 11, 2005... Publix Supermarkets Inc. has joined the ranks of merchants suing the card associations over interchange. The federal anti-trust suit, filed under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the Eastern District of New York against Visa USA, Visa...

Chase Merchant Services, Paymentech Combine.
October 11, 2005... In what was either one of the most inflated, or perhaps misunderstood, announcements of the year, JP Morgan Chase & Co. and First Data Corp. said they were combining Chase Merchant Services Inc. and Paymentech into a new merchant acquiring...

Visa's Emerging Markets Growth Impressive.
October 11, 2005... Credit card market growth may be stagnant, but in Visa USA's emerging market segment--bill payment, business-to-business, government and small ticket items--the growth is robust, according to data released last week by Visa USA. Overall...

Gary Craft, 1958-2005.(founder and chief executive officer of Financial DNA)(Obituary)
October 11, 2005... Gary Craft, founder and chief executive officer of Financial DNA, died recently of acute myeloid leukemia. He had been diagnosed with the disease the previous week: A memorial service was held in San Francisco on Oct. 5. A blues guitar...

Who's Who.
October 11, 2005... * Christine Barry and Ekaterina Walsh have joined Aite Group, Barry as research director for wholesale banking, and Walsh as research director for consumer and small business research. Barry joins Aite from Highquest Partners; Walsh from HNW...

Banks Must Fight Fraud at the Enterprise Level.
October 11, 2005... Banks have typically dealt with fraud (by check, credit card, or loan) department by department. In other words, a crook could be writing bad checks on the one hand and defaulting on his credit cards on the other without the respective...

New to Market.
October 11, 2005... * Boston Communications Group, Inc. says it is launching its wireless payment products, called bcgi Payment Manager, in the Latin American market. (Boston Communications Group Inc., 781-904-5321) * Bottomline Technologies says it has a...

The Checklist.
October 11, 2005... BancorpSouth, Inc. [BXS] This $10.8 billion Mississippi-based bank says that it expects its after- tax earnings for the quarter ended Sept. 30 to take a hit of $9 million, or 11.5 cents per diluted share, because of Hurricane Katrina. The...

Passage Of Industry-Backed Data Legislation More Likely.
October 25, 2005... Last week, a data protection bill sponsored by the Senate Judiciary Committee suffered a parliamentary setback from friends of the financial services community, who promptly substituted a bill more to their liking. The committee was ready...

Competitors Fear PayPal Threat To Their Business.
October 25, 2005... To listen to PayPal, it is a friend to all. It says its recent $370 million deal to buy VeriSign Inc.'s online payment gateway and the 100,000 merchant accounts it serves, not to mention its side agreement to buy 1 million VeriSign...

KeyBank, Deutsche Bank Slapped For Alleged BSA Violations.
October 25, 2005... After a hiatus over the summer, two consent orders dealing with Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) violations have emerged. One is from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) against KeyBank, and the other is from the Federal Reserve Bank...

BofA Building Up Its Card Processing Ops.
October 25, 2005... Bank of America seems be serious about its card processing business and planning to take it in-house, likely in an effort to squeeze some cash out of the $35 billion MBNA deal, while also planning to spread its operations deeper into...

CyberSource Decides Not To Acquire CardSystems.(CardSystems Solutions Inc.)(Brief Article)
October 25, 2005... Just when you thought the whole mess was under the rug, CardSystems Solutions Inc. has lost its potential acquirer, CyberSource, after the latter conducted its due diligence on CardSystems and decided it really wasn't interested, after all...

UK Moves Closer To Regulating Interchange.(Office of Fair Trading, Foreign exchange rates)(Brief Article)
October 25, 2005... Great Britain's Office of Fair Trading (OFT)--that nation's Department of Commerce--ruled last week that Visa and its members have been acting in restraint of trade, and violating European Union regulations. Their setting of interchange...

The Checklist.
October 25, 2005... The Bank of New York Company, Inc. [BK] BoNY says that in the recent quarter, net income was $389 million, or $0.51 per share, on revenue of $1.74 billion, compared with net income of $354 million, or $0.46 per share, on revenue of $1.52...

Spending for Security and Core Systems A Bright Spot in Economic Slowdown.
October 25, 2005... Economic cycles are immutable. Since investment in computer and payment systems tracks an economy's performance, we can expect a slowdown in the next few years as the normal expansion of the past several years slides into a normal slowdown,...