NEWSThe Smart Card Alliance unveiled new resources, including multimedia and expanded search capabilities, to its website, www.smartcardalliance.org. The new features are designed to give visitors easier access to the SCA's extensive content on the latest trends in technology for the payments, health care, physical access, identity and transportation markets.
The new multimedia center features video interviews of experts talking about the industry's hottest topics. The first set of interviews covers a wide range of topics, including near field communication (NFC) and mobile payments, transit agency acceptance of open bankcard payments, the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, health care information exchange, and biometrics and smart card technology.
Also new are slideshows on such topics as smart card technology and the National Cybersecurity Strategy, chip-enabled mobile marketing and chip-enabled Europay/MasterCard/Visa (EMV) cards.
In addition, the site now has enhanced search capabilities so visitors can readily access the SCA's latest news, white papers, industry publications, market research reports, industry certification and education resources, and more.
On April 14, 2011, VeriFone Inc. heralded the 30th anniversary of its founding by Bill Melton in Hawaii. Douglas G. Bergeron is also celebrating his 10th year as the company's Chief Executive Officer this year. VeriFone reported that during Bergeron's tenure, its annual revenue has grown from $300 million to more than $1 billion.
The company has created a website, http://momentum.verifone.com, to spotlight its employees, innovation and global reach. VeriFone will also be posting trivia throughout the year about its achievements to date, as well as its plans for the future.
The Electronic Check Clearing House Organization launched the National Check Payments Certification program to help financial institutions enhance critical check knowledge.
The Upper Midwest Automated Clearing House Association, Viewpointe and Wisconsin Automated Clearing House Association partnered with ECCHO to prepare training for an annual certification exam to be administered by ECCHO. Other partners include EPCOR and The Bankers Bank.
Changes to the check payments system improved efficiency but have resulted in staff reductions that dilute the industry's collective expertise, stated ECCHO President David Walker. The exam will test individuals in four subject areas:
The first exam will be held in the spring of 2012; preparation for the exams will begin in 2011. For more information, visit www.eccho.org/about_press.php.
The University of Washington won the Sixth National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition April 11, 2011. The NCCDC pitted nine teams of full-time college students against each other to test cyber security skills. The event was presented by Deloitte Development LLC.
The competition required the teams to correct problems on their networks and perform regular business tasks while defending against a Red Team that bombarded them with live, hostile activity throughout the three-day competition. Ryan Jones, a security professional in Trustwave's SpiderLabs division, participated for the sixth time as a member of the Red Team.
ANNOUNCEMENTSBlue Beacon Truck Washes implemented the POSLynx 220 payment router with TransNet from Precidia Technologies Inc. at 100 locations throughout North America. TransNet's Level 2 certification with Blue Beacon's processor Elavon Inc. enables the retail service chain to reduce transaction fees.
France-based Groupement des Cartes Bancaires certified Ingenico for contactless payments by card and mobile phone.
The specifications for deploying contactless payments were based on those used in mobile trials in the French cities of Caen, Strasbourg and Nice. Ingenico's mobile payment technology is based on NFC.
Hypercom Corp. completed full EMV certification of its Artema Modular self-service payment system and countertop terminals at 49 Metro stations in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Metro passengers can use the system for secure payment using their chip and PIN cards. Thales Group served as integrator in charge of the project.
J.P. Morgan's Treasury Services business was ranked first in automated clearing house (ACH) payment origination, according to NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association. Rankings are determined by computing all ACH-formatted transactions that financial institutions sent to or received from an ACH operator or other financial institution in 2010.
Small business financing firm Max Advance LLC secured a multimillion dollar credit line from a hedge fund, enabling the firm to extend financing to brick-and-mortar merchants. Max Advance is looking for processors and ISO partners to invest the capital with their merchants.
Merchant Solutions Group reached a milestone in providing cash advances to the dining industry. The group recently provided working capital to its 400th restaurant. MSG has provided $40 million in capital to restaurants since the company's inception in 2007.
California-based Obopay Inc. was awarded the 2011 Asian Banker Technology Implementation Award at a banking conference in Hong Kong for its work in India.
Along with YES Bank, Obopay was honored as having the best multichannel capability project. Obopay's mobile money technology drives partner-branded mobile money services.
Netherlands-based processor Payvision, which specializes in the card-not-present market, opened an office in Hong Kong to advance its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Payvision has secured a dedicated bank identification number sponsorship with a Hong Kong financial institution. The processor already has offices in New York, Utah, Spain and Singapore.
Pivotal Payments launched its enhanced processing and reporting platform called HD3, which stands for highly diverse, dependable and deliverable. Pivotal stated that by eliminating the middle-man, HD3 will allow the company to further tailor its merchant services to meet the needs of its partners and clients. HD3 features tougher fraud-prevention measures and is designed to provide real-time access to data for faster client-care response and rapid problem resolution.
Summit Merchant Solutions moved to the new headquarters of parent company Certified Payment Processing in Carrollton, Texas, from Summit's location in Richardson, Texas. The 80,000 square foot campus includes video production facilities to expand the company's number of training videos.
SWACHA - The Electronic Payments Resource participated in the PayItGreen Alliance by hosting a specially designed car to tour the state of Texas during the month of April 2011.
A Facebook page will promote the campaign through May 31 at www.facebook.com/getonboardwithswacha. The PayItGreen alliance launched the initiative to make consumers aware of the environmental benefits of choosing online banking and electronic bill pay over paper-based transactions. For more information, visit www.payitgreen.org.
Vanco Services LLC launched a website for utility companies. The site, http://epaymentsbyvanco.com, provides new payment options and helps utilities manage online banking payments. Vanco is a Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) Level 1 Compliant Service Provider and has 17,000 clients.
PARTNERSHIPSIn collaboration with fraud-prevention software provider Accertify Inc., First Data Corp. launched Fraud FlexDetect, its e-commerce fraud detection and prevention service. It offers card-not-present merchants a detection and management tool that operates directly within each transaction's authorization flow.
Fraud FlexDetect is accessible through several of First Data's processing platforms. The service includes a real-time scoring engine that evaluates the risk level of transaction data based on merchants' parameters. More than 100 merchants signed up for the service prior to its release.
In addition, First Data and mobile-commerce developer SK C&C USA heralded the commercial release of a trusted service manager (TSM) platform that enables NFC devices for issuers. The TSM allows account issuers, including merchants and mobile network operators, to avoid multiple complex integrations with a single integration to the platform.
Kiosk provider Cardtronics Inc. implemented the TestSystem Network from Lexcel Solutions Inc. The network is a platform for testing transaction authorizations against regional and global ATM/POS networks. The Lexcel system allows processors to gain network precertification.
CheckAlt Payment Solutions completed certification on the Velocity Payment System from Govolution LLC. Velocity customers can now process transactions through CheckAlt's remote deposit capture system with data integrated into the Velocity system.
FrontStream Payments Inc. expanded payment services to propane distributor clients of Suburban Software Systems Inc. FrontStream provides Suburban's clients with software integration support, giving Suburban a streamlined POS system for processing payments.
Ingenico signed an original equipment manufacturer agreement with KICTeam for cleaning cards designed for Ingenico POS terminals. Five products using KICTeam's Waffletechnology cards are available to customers worldwide directly from Ingenico.
Shift4 Corp. integrated its Dollars On The Net gateway with Microsoft's Dynamics Retail Management System. The combination makes Shift4's products, services and security features available to Dynamics RMS users.
The integration was implemented by a Microsoft certified partner and is marketed by Shift4 under license.
Concurrent with its launch in North America, SmartSoft US LLC partnered with Everlink Payment Services Inc. and Zebra Technologies Corp. A payment software developer, SmartSoft provides financial institutions with EMV card products and processing.
Everlink delivers electronic transaction switching and POS services and deploys EMV chip-enabled ATMs. Zebra manufactures card printing devices.
Tennessee Credit Union League expanded its partnership with CO-OP Financial Services. The league added three services from the CO-OP payment processing line, including signature debit processing, ATM/PIN POS debit processing and ATM terminal driving.
Trustwave is working with Tucows' wholesale Internet division, Open SRS, to offer Trustwave Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) products to Tucows' reseller network. Tucows manages over 10 million domain names through the network. Tucows will use Trustwave's digital, wildcard SSL and extended-validation SSL certificates. Tucows reportedly is the first to offer Trustwave's QuickTrust SSL certificate, which includes malware detection and other security checks.
In other company news, the American Bankers Association extended its endorsement of Trustwave to include a data security suite that protects financial institutions from insider threats and abuse of proprietary information. Trustwave's DataControl integrates data leakage prevention with Smart Tag encryption.
Wholesale Merchant Processing chose Cynergy Data LLC as its new processor. Wholesale is participating in Cynergy's LaunchPad, an advocacy program.
ACQUISITIONSPayment systems provider ACI Worldwide Inc. bought ISD Corp. to broaden the functionality of its payment products for retailers. ISD provides payment management software to retailers in North America. The merger added 140 customers to ACI, bringing its client base to 220 retailers worldwide.
ACI intends to integrate ISD's features with ACI's Retail Commerce Server. ISD's in-store integration components and tokenization of consumer data, combined with ACI's hosted service, are expected to reduce costs to retailers related to maintaining PCI compliance.
Pivotal Payments acquired a merchant portfolio from American National Payments of St. Louis.
The purchase adds over 2,000 merchants to Pivotal's North American portfolio and an established ISO partner to its sales channel.
APPOINTMENTSMercator Advisory Group named Alison Aller its Digital Media Consultant. She has 20 years of experience in sales, advertising and business development.
Industry vets join ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide hired two payments industry veterans. Alan Forgione, who was appointed Sales Account Executive, has 25 years' experience in merchant services, acquiring and risk management. Dan Caniglia was named Senior Solution Consultant. He has worked in merchant card portfolio management and client relationships for 20 years.
Heartland Payment Systems Inc. made senior management appointments and changes to support the company's growth. Heidi Goff was named Chief Marketing Officer. Most recently, she was President and Managing Director for the Americas at Hypercom. Goff also held executive positions at Transaction Network Services Inc. and MasterCard International.
Maria Rueda was appointed Chief Financial Officer. Previously, she was CFO at ING Direct and Bloomberg Tradebook LLC. President and former CFO Robert H.B. Baldwin Jr. continues as President, taking on broader responsibilities in strategy and operations.
MasterCard Worldwide appointed Maripi S. Jalandoni Group Head of Marketing for the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa region.
She is based in Singapore. Most recently, Jalandoni was Managing Director at Barclaycard in the United Arab Emirates. Previously, she was Country Chief Executive of ABN-AMRO Bank in Hong Kong.
SignaPay LLC hired Jason Reich to manage regional operations in North Carolina. He previously worked for Central Carolina Bank, now known as SunTrust Banks Inc.
Payments industry veteran Keith Woodward joined transaction fraud prevention specialist Brighterion Inc. as Director of Business Development.
Previously, he worked in Visa Inc.'s commercial product and partnership group and at American Express Corporate Services.
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