The lawsuit combines 14 earlier complaints from some of the nation’s largest merchant associations, resulting from a decision by a seven-judge panel chaired by U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges of Florida.
   Gleeson also presided over the so-called Wal-Mart suit.

    Govolution is a provider of electronic payment technology and services to the public sector. The company enables federal, state and local governments and their depository financial institutions to electronically process consumers’ credit, debit and ACH payments made through a variety of methods, including Internet, telephone or in person.
   Industry analysts estimate that more than $9 trillion is collected annually for taxes, tolls, citations, permits and payments for public sector organizations and other regulated industries. Consumer demand is shifting those payments away from paper-based methods, such as cash and check, towards electronic payments. The acquisition of Govolution gives First American a distribution channel into the fast emerging consumer-to-government electronic payments market.

    The 2005 MasterCard Recurring Payments Awareness, Behavior & Attitude study showed that more than two thirds of U.S. households now pay some recurring bills automatically compared to those writing checks (64 percent). Nearly four in 10 households link payments automatically to a credit card (38 percent) and three in 10 households charge them automatically to a debit card (31 percent). In addition, among automatic bill paying households, the number of bills paid automatically rose in the last five years, from an average of 3.1 bills per household in 2000 to 4.4 bills today. During the same period, the number of checks written declined by nearly 50 percent, from 4.4 to 2.4 among these households.

    The agreement between the two organizations adds POS data services to the WWRE platform providing global store-level visibility to thousands of retailers and suppliers worldwide.
   VeriSign also announced the acquisition of Retail Solutions Inc., a provider of POS data to the retail industry with more than 130 industry leading customers such as Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline.

    Through a multi-year agreement with EWI, this alliance provides United Bank Card’s merchants with the ability to electronically process payments for a broad variety of prepaid products including wireless re-charge, Visa and MasterCard stored value cards and a complete line of long distance calling cards.
   EWI and UBC have also completed an integration of EWI’s wireless recharge, calling card and financial services products into EWI’s PayGoSM processing platform. This service will allow UBC to offer retailers the ability to sell products over their existing credit card terminals, kiosks, web portals and ATM’s.

    Following successful trials conducted at MasterCard’s corporate facilities, more than 500 vending machines throughout New York City and Atlanta, Georgia will now be specially equipped to accept MasterCard PayPass.
   The e-Port payment terminal from USA Technologies installs into existing cash-only vending machines, enabling them to accept traditional credit and debit cards as well as contactless cards.

    According to the research, cash and checks now account for only 45 percent of consumers’ monthly payments - down from 57 percent in 2001, and 49 percent in 2003.
   The biggest change is in the area of gift cards, which account for 4 percent of all in-store purchases, up from 2 percent in 2003. Consumers’ use of gift/prepaid cards for at least one purchase per month in stores increased from 12 percent in 2003, to 32 percent in 2005. Twelve percent of consumers plan to use gift/prepaid cards more often over the next two years.

    It is estimated that retail sales volume in this sector will grow by nearly 24 percent over 2004 ($89 billion vs. $110 billion). Fueling that growth is the explosion in new business-to-consumer merchants that is estimated to grow from 300,000 merchants in 2004 to more than 500,000 in 2005.

    The joint venture, VeriFone Transportation Systems, Inc. (VTS), will supply fleet and private taxi owners with VeriFone’s secure payment and multi-media content delivery systems to provide an interface for fleet management, dispatch, scheduling, messaging, GPS navigation, customer reporting, and other functions. VTS will also generate revenue from transaction processing fees and provision of ongoing support services.

    These security requirements were established by Visa International and MasterCard International to ensure that cardholder PINs are always handled securely by the PIN acceptance device.

    The Glendale, Ca.-based automated teller machine and electronic kiosk processor has signed a three-year agreement with TNS. TNS’ ATMLink service - broadband data transaction support that works with any ATM: dial-up, legacy protocol or Internet protocol (IP) - will support 4,200 dedicated access digital subscriber line (DSL) sites, which include hospitality, gaming and quick service restaurants (QSRs).

    Through this partnership, Q Comm’s suite of prepaid products will now include Movida Wireless prepaid airtime cards, pins and handsets.
   Movida Communications uses Sprint’s enhanced all digital PCS network, and currently offers its service nationwide, with emphasis on markets with significant Hispanic populations. Q Comm merchants throughout the United States can now add Movida prepaid airtime and handsets to their product portfolio.

    The AIRCHARGE product line provides a payment solution that enables merchants to perform swiped credit card and check guarantee transactions on select cellular phones. AIRCHARGE provides credit card processing and wireless check guarantee transactions using Java-enabled phones on nearly all major US cellular carriers. A multimedia demonstration of the service is available at www.aircharge.com.

    The Excella is a Check 21 and Electronic Check Presentment compliant check scanner. With the flexibility of a 70-document auto-feeder and single feed bypass tray, Excella can automatically process a single check or batch process checks, while endorsing, reading MICR and scanning the front and the back of the checks in a single pass.

    The new SF8000 is designed for integration into EMV and PCI compliant systems where terminal panel space is limited. As with the full size 8000 Series, SF8000 Series Keypads provide an intuitive interface for users with visual and other impairments. Unique design features incorporate many elements of the DDA (Europe’s Disabilities Discrimination Act). This new addition to the 8000 Series enables POP terminal designers to choose a keypad that fits without sacrificing responsive switching.

    The new technology, Shift4 Tokenization, fully encrypts the card data received from the merchant. Shift4 sends the card data on to the processor and receives back from the processor an approval. All this is the same as it is today; it is after this point where the process differs. Instead of sending back the card data to the merchant and the POS system, Shift4 turns the data into a token. A token is a globally unique, randomized representation of credit card data that is 16 characters long. For payment applications and merchants who use Shift4, only the Token is stored in the system.
   The token spans the lifetime of the transaction, even into history, so it provides all the same support for tips, tabs and incremental authorizations. Basically, the token is stored on the POS system and when an incremental authorization is required on the card the Token is sent to Shift4. The token represents a specific credit card transaction and card data that is stored in Shift4’s data center. When the token is sent through, Shift4 translates that Token into the card data and sends it to the processor. The processor sends back the authorization code; Shift4 turns it back into a Token and sends that along with the approval code to the merchants. The authorization goes through and again no credit card data is stored on the system. That means that the merchant doesn’t need the card number or data past the initial request.

   

    The new ViVOnfc solution provides a secure infrastructure designed to accelerate the adoption and usage of NFC enabled mobile phones.
   With ViVOnfc, users with NFC phones will be able to “carry their credit and debit cards virtually” and make contactless payments at merchant locations. NFC technology provides short-range wireless connectivity—over a typical distance of just 2-4 inches. Since NFC devices do not operate over a carrier’s radio spectrum, they can be used anywhere.

    The company’s listing application is subject to review by the American Stock Exchange, which has sole discretion in determining its acceptance. Unless and until the application is accepted, the company’s shares will continue to trade on the OTCBB.

    The technology is deployed across all three crucial banking retail customer touch points – branches, ATMs and business client locations. Additional channel integration includes a partnership with Diebold’s ImageWay ATM. Alogent also recently announced an agreement with Loomis Fargo to provide virtual vault check capture capabilities by integrating with Glory’s cash processing platform resulting in an efficient single source of checks and mixed deposits.

    The system is designed to help save children’s lives by quickly disseminating critical information about missing children and their suspected abductors through VeriFone’s integrated POS directly to Valero’s more than 1,000 retail stores throughout the U.S. Nearly 60,000 children are abducted by non-family members every year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The AMBER Alert network, which broadcasts emergency messages about victims and their abductors, is a vital tool that could lead to the recovery of these missing children. More than 200 children’s lives have been saved since the AMBER Alert program began in 1996, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

    The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in mid-November by Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, LLP.
   “Soaring interchange fees are devastating the retail industry and increasing costs for all American consumers regardless of their form of payment. In a free market, with low interest rates, fraud down and transaction volume up, competition would cause interchange fees to decrease. However, interchange fees continue to grow exponentially because there is no competitive market,” said Thomas K. Zaucha, NGA President and CEO.
   NGA said that it had made numerous requests to Visa to eliminate, justify, and explain unwarranted price discrimination in the setting of interchange fees. NGA challenges Visa’s ability to demonstrate meaningful incremental efficiency to justify Visa’s practice of giving significantly lower interchange fees to a small handful of the largest merchants.
   “The anticompetitive behaviors of VISA and MasterCard have regrettably forced us to take this drastic step. Our goal is to level the playing field for all retail merchants including second and third tier grocery retailers and protect consumers from needless costs,” stated Zaucha. “There is no such thing as a free frequent flyer mile.”
   NGA represents over 1,500 grocery retailer companies across the nation, and over 60 wholesale grocery companies.
   “Visa remains confident in its ability to defend interchange, a practice that not only provides a fair mechanism for fueling growth and sharing system costs, but has been upheld as legal in federal court,” said Paul Cohen, Vice President, Visa USA, in a prepared statement.
   “Recently, the U.S. District Court in Northern California dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit by California merchants accusing Visa and its members of antitrust violations,” Cohen added. “In the court’s ruling, the judge accepted Visa’s argument that merchants in the Kendall case were not harmed and do not have legal standing to sue the association, as they are indirect purchasers of our services.
   “These lawsuits are an attempt by some merchants and their plaintiffs’ lawyers to shift the normal costs of doing business onto consumers by assessing surcharges or ‘check-out’ fees,” Cohen said. “Charging a check-out fee is like asking some customers to pay extra for using a dressing room, or charging them for store lights and heating. Check-out fees are anti-consumer and that is why Visa prohibits them.”
   In a prepared statement, MasterCard responded: “A number of individual merchants and merchant trade groups have filed lawsuits alleging that MasterCard’s U.S. default interchange fees violate the antitrust laws, and that the cost of MasterCard interchange is too high. MasterCard believes these lawsuits are without merit, and are a clear demonstration of merchants wanting the benefits of accepting payment cards without having to pay for the value of the services they receive.”
   “Previous lawsuits have been filed and complaints made challenging default interchange, and each time courts and regulators around the globe have found interchange fees in principle to be legal, efficient and essential to the operation of four-party systems like MasterCard’s.
   “Interchange, which is essential to the operation of a four-party payment system such as MasterCard, is a small payment by a merchant’s bank to the cardholder’s issuing bank. In establishing default interchange rates, MasterCard considers, among other factors, certain costs that the issuing banks incurs, namely, credit losses, fraud losses, and fraud prevention costs, the cost of the interest-free period (the time before the cardholder has made a payment), and processing costs.” n