Industry News

A hybrid, patent pending web-based platform that processes and deposits all types of paper items including business checks into electronic transactions through a single point of entry system, expresscheck21SM is designed for clients that want to process both consumer and commercial checks at their business locations.

Calpian, Inc., a Dallas, TX headquartered ISO finance company, recently launched Calpian LoansTM a loan processing program for ISOs, acquirers, and merchant service providers.

The program is available to all of the above who have either portable or non-portable merchant portfolios. In the past, only ISOs who could leverage their portable merchant portfolios could obtain loan funding.

National Payment Card, LLC, an electronic funds payment service bureau that interfaces with POS systems, recently introduced an ACH payment system for Flash Foods of Waycross, Ga.

Referred to as LoyalDebit, the agreement enables Flash Foods to introduce ACH-based payments by leveraging their existing loyalty card as a payment card.

According to a poll from TriCipher, consumers feel that current security measures such as tokens and pictures are proving severely inadequate against web threats.

They also see compliance and restoring consumer confidence as critical drivers of security strategies. Another finding is that the market is demanding SOA-based security infrastructures to address evolving customer risk assessment needs.

NACHA is now assessing financial institutions a fee of $0.0001 on all ACH transactions except “on-us” transactions. NACHA is also assessing every financial institution using the ACH Network an annual fee of $42, including those that choose not to be members of regional payments associations.

Fiserv Imagesoft, a unit of Fiserv, Inc., and CONIX Systems, Inc. are partnering to provide financial institutions with a solution to eliminate duplicate payment postings and processing.

With technology provided by CONIX Systems, Fiserv Imagesoft is now able to enable identification of duplicates before they ever get posted inaccurately.

Retalix and Postilion, Inc. have partnered to provide an integrated commercial fueling solution for travel centers and an open-systems payment switch for credit and debit transactions for convenience stores.

The solution combines Retalix StorePoint, a software application for convenience stores, and the Retalix Commercial Fueling module with Postilion Realtime, a payment-switching engine.

The Department of Justice had issued an informal request for information following the March 2006 introduction of VantageScore.

The six-month pilot tests the use of Near Field Communication enabled mobile phones to make contactless credit card purchases. More than 200 HSBC employees in New York, Chicago and several other large U.S. cities used an “over-the-air” personalization process to securely load their HSBC credit card data onto their mobile phones.

The law firms of Berger & Montague, PC and Stern Shapiro Weissberg & Garin, LLP recently filed a class action suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on behalf of all consumers who had personal and financial data stolen from the computer network of TJX Companies, Inc. and who were damaged thereby.

The complaint charges that TJX was negligent for failing to maintain adequate computer data security of customer credit and debit card data, which was accessed and stolen by a computer hacker. Although TJX discovered the data breach in mid-December 2006, it did not publicly announce the intrusion until a month after it occurred, in the line form a press release.

Security companies recently formed the Payment Card Industry Security Vendor Alliance (PCI SVA), designed to assist members of the payment card industry and the PCI Security Standards Council in educating the business community on the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Founding members of PCI SVA are ConfigureSoft, Inc., Cyber-Ark, Inc., Modulo Security, Proginet, Inc., Protegrity USA, Inc., Reflex Security, SafeNet, Inc. and Verisign. PCI SVA (www.pcialliance.org) will assist members of the payment card industry and the PCI Security Standards Council — composed of merchants, banks and point-of-sale vendors - in educating the business community on the requirements and business value of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, a global benchmark intended to improve security throughout the entire payment card transaction process. Founding members of PCI SVA will also support the business community by providing flexible PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) solutions to address the needs of system integrators and business users.

Inside Contactless recently obtained MasterCard PayPass Chip Assessment Security Testing compliance for the MicroPassTM L4-2G intelligent hardware platform.

This partnership enables both companies to jointly market their various product offerings for merchant services and company formation services.

Arthur Blank and Company, a Boston-based manufacturer of custom debit, credit and bank cards, recently introduced the AB RecycledCard, a 100 percent recycled PVC product that uses overruns and other scraps generated from its traditional PVC card manufacturing process.

First Data Corp. recently acquired Size Technologies, Inc., a provider of loyalty, stored value and transaction marketing solutions for an undisclosed price.

The acquisition enables First Data to a real-time point-of-sale, tender-neutral loyalty solution designed to help drive customer loyalty.

Advanced Merchant Services, Inc. has filed a multi-million dollar complaint against its former processing company, Total Merchant Services, for actual, compensatory and other damages.

In the complaint AMS contends that TMS has breached several contracts, violated a number of covenants contained in their business agreement and has failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in currently due commissions as well as other monetary earnings totaling in the millions.


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