All articles by Verdict Staff
Verdict Staff
Head for the cloud
Hosted services and cloud technology offers many advantages to the payments industry but Alison Ebbage asks can huge security and compliance issues be overcome?
Visa boosts presence in Egypt
Visa is planning to expand its operations in Egypt in a bid to drive its growth across North and West Africa.
Carta integrates MasterCard’s MOTAPS
Payments solutions provider Carta Worldwide has integrated a MasterCard platform for near-field communication (NFC) programmes, claimed to a processor first.The Mobile Over-the-Air Provisioning service (MOTAPS) from MasterCard aims to enable issuers to capture revenue and fain competitive advantage by allowing a simple roll out of mobile NFC programmes.
7-Eleven launches money transfer service
Money transfer company Ria Financial Services and cash-payment network PayNearMe have teamed up to launch a money transfer and bill payment service across 5,000 US locations of convenience store chain 7-Eleven.Under the new service, consumers will be able to initiate money transfers or bill payments using their mobile phones in real-time at a 7-Eleven store register.
SPA reports 18% increase in EMV shipments
Global shipments of EMV-enabled payments cards grew 18% to 798m in 2010, according to the Smart Payment Association (SPA).EMV-enabled chip cards are now said to represent 96% of shipments with numbers doubling since 2007, which the SPA claims is an efficient response to the increasing sophistication and globalisation of payment card fraud.
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Card fraud more concerning than terrorism
Payment card fraud is the prime concern for consumers in UK, ahead of concerns over physical security such as terrorism says IT services firm Unisys security index. The bi-annual report claims bank security concerns soared in the last year with 92% of respondents claiming they are worried about bank fraud and 91% concerned with ID theft.
Westpac restores services after IT meltdown
Australias Westpac has restored its ATM, EFTPOS and online banking services following a ten-hour outage caused by an air-conditioning fault at one of its data centres.It is reported that the bank decided against switching to bank-up systems, deeming it to be quicker to reboot each IT platform.
Blackhawk adds brands to Gift Card Mall
Prepaid and financial payments products provider Blackhawk Network has expanded the issuance of its Gift Card Mall prepaid cards in Mexico to include Office Depot and Comercial Mexicana stores.Consumers in Mexico will now be to purchase a variety of Blackhawk Networks prepaid cards for dining, entertainment, digital gaming, music and fashion.
Merchant360 develops NFC POS stack
Point-of-sale (POS) application developer Merchant360 (M360) has created a near-field communication (NFC) stack for payment terminals in a bid to facilitate mobile contactless integration.M360 claims while current contactless-enabled POS terminals can support contactless scheme payment solutions such as Visa paywave, MasterCard PayPass, American Express ExpressPay, Chase Blink and Discover Zip, they do not allow for easy and inexpensive integration of non-traditional applications such as Bling Nation and MoneyCell to reside on and share the reader.
Isis pulls plug on m-payments network plans
Telco joint venture Isis has reportedly announced a spectacular u-turn by pulling plans to launch a near-field communication (NFC) m-payments network, originally designed to rival Visa and MasterCard. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, two people close to the US wireless carriers that formed Isis AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless – said setting up a separate network would have been too difficult and time consuming.