FYISOs News
Trial Date Set in Visa/MasterCard Antitrust Case A date finally has been set for the Visa/MasterCard antitrust litigation involving a class of four million merchants. U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson set April 28, 2003 as the trial date in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In October 1996, merchants such as Wal-Mart, The Limited, Sears Roebuck, Safeway and Circuit City and trade associations National Retail Federation, International Mass Retail Association and the Food Marketing Institute filed the class-action lawsuit. The merchants have charged Visa and MasterCard with violating U.S. antitrust laws by attempting to monopolize the debit transaction market and forcing merchants to accept offline debit transactions.

Documents concerning the case have been under seal but were scheduled to be made public on July 12, 2002.
From Nickel Slots to ATM Slots If you run out of coins at the slot machine, now you can use your ATM card to obtain more funds without ever leaving your seat. Infonox, a software developer of transaction and payment products, announced its Active Payment Platform (APP) will be deployed by QuikPlay ATM.

QuikPlay ATM is majority-owned by Global Cash Access (GCA), a joint venture of First Data Corp. and M&C International, Inc., and a provider of cash access to the gaming industry. Using a QuikPlay ATM, a customer can safely swipe an ATM card, enter a PIN, request an amount of money and, if approved, obtain funds at the slot machine.

Sounds menacing, but most banks set a limit on the amount of money you may withdraw per day. The APP includes a self-transaction exclusion program that allows problem gamblers to block their own access to ATM, credit card and POS debit card cash advances.

A patron can ask GCA to reject all requested transactions exceeding the aggregate of the patron's daily limit for a card during a single calendar day at all GCA-operated ATMs and cash-advance terminals.

Infonox's APP is also compliant with all other intensive government regulations, such as ensuring that the system is secure and does not provide an opportunity for fraud.
Fast Food Getting Faster and More Convenient? What's so great about an express lane at the grocery store? Not only is the line usually shorter, but you often have a choice in your method of payment: cash, check, credit or ATM/debit.

Burger King seems to have this in mind as it rolls out a pilot program in its Atlanta restaurants. In a partnership with Visa U.S.A., 100 Burger King restaurants will accept payment cards for a limited time.

Customers will have the convenience of using payment cards at participating Burger King restaurants and drive-thrus by handing their card to the cashier. This is good news for those who want fast food but don't want to pay with cash. However, in three of the restaurants, Burger King is trying out a new technology designed to save even more time for customers who want to use payment cards at the drive-thru.

In this test program, customers swipe their cards at the drive-thru order board before placing their food orders. By the time the customer drives to the food-pickup window, the payment transaction already will have been completed. This payment technology is similar to what customers use at gas pumps across the U.S.

The pilot will determine which card solution will best meet Burger King's overall needs and will be carefully monitored to determine the speed and accuracy of transactions, overall customer satisfaction, average ticket size and other measures. The program will run through Sept. 1, 2002.
Web Site Cracks Down on Credit Card Fraud Ever wonder if your credit card number is in the hands of crooks and waiting to be used by them? A new Web site, www.cardcops.com, allows you to check to see if your number has been robbed.

CardCops, an anti-fraud education group, collected credit card numbers from Internet chat rooms where thieves exchange stolen card numbers or check whether or not stolen numbers have been deactivated. CardCops alerted federal authorities to its discovery and then turned over its database to investigators.

CardCops used this database to launch a secure, free Web site, www.cardcops.com, where credit card holders can type in their credit card number and, for safety reasons, omit the expiration date. If the credit card number comes back positive, it may have been stolen, and users should alert their financial institution.

The goal of the Web site is to decrease the time between the theft of a credit card number and the cardholder's discovery of any fraudulent charges. The site, which was created in May 2002, contains more than 100,000 credit card numbers. The site was so popular in its first several days online that its server crashed.

FYISOs Announcements
Global Payments Listed in Top 100 Global Payments Inc., provider of electronic transaction processing services, was ranked 59th on the Information Technology 100 list, Business Week's annual report on Technology Companies. Global Payments was ranked among companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, eBay, Oracle and Dell Computer.

To qualify, companies needed at least $300 million in revenue and then were ranked according to shareholder return, return on equity, revenue growth and total revenue.
Certegy Wins Leather Retailer Certegy Inc., will be the exclusive provider of check warranty and collections services to Minnesota-based Wilsons The Leather Experts Inc. Wilsons is a specialty retailer of leather outerwear, apparel, travel products and accessories and has 754 stores spread among 46 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, Guam and Puerto Rico.
McCormick & Schmick's Adopts New Gift Card Program Givex Corp., a gift card and loyalty transaction processor, announced that McCormick & Schmick's Restaurants selected Givex as its gift card solution provider for all 35 of its full-service restaurants. The Givex technology will be integrated with McCormick & Schmick's current point-of-sale system, Squirrel Systems. The new gift card program will replace McCormick & Schmick's existing paper-based gift certificate program.
Wells Fargo Using Private ACH Electronic Payments Network (EPN), a private automated clearinghouse (ACH) operator for domestic consumer and commercial payments, announced that Wells Fargo & Co. has begun moving volume over to EPN's private-sector electronic payments system from the Federal Reserve's ACH. The ongoing conversion by EPN member banks from the Federal Reserve's ACH fueled a 110 percent increase in EPN's transaction volume since June 2001. Serving more than 1,200 financial institutions, EPN processed more than a billion transactions in 2001 and expects to process close to two billion in 2002. The addition of Wells Fargo expands EPN's reach to the West Coast.
Bridgeview Payment Solutions Notes Milestone Chicago-based Bridgeview Payment Solutions (BPS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Bridgeview Bank and Trust, exceeded a monthly dollar processing volume of $1 billion over a 12-month period ending in May 2002. "Our growth in processing volume, despite the lackluster economy, has been very strong," said Tom Haleas, Chairman of BPS. "In the first five months of 2002, sales-volume growth has exceeded 32 percent."

FYISOs Appointments
ETA Adds New Director of Communications The Electronic Transaction Association has appointed Gary Hicks as Director of Communications. Hicks has more than 30 years of marketing and communications experience in financial services, consumer products, agribusiness, manufacturing, association management and nonprofit fundraising. Hicks has worked at a variety of different organizations, such as Fortune 100 companies and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and has even created his own start-up training company.
SousaFone's Sousa Joins PayStar PayStar Corp., a distributor of communications and financial services, has appointed William Sousa as President of PayStar's GLOBALCash division. Sousa is one of the founders of SousaFone LLC of Dallas.

Earlier this year, PayStar's Switch division partnered with SousaFone to roll out a new online, PIN-based, prepaid "flat-rate" long-distance service administered completely via the Internet. PayStar plans to launch GLOBALCash's prepaid ATM debit card and MasterCard programs in July 2002.
Transaction Processing Industry Veteran Joins Vital Vital Processing Services, a technology-based commerce enabling service provider, announced the addition of John Marshall to its executive leadership team. Marshall, who has more than 25 years of experience in the transaction processing and merchant acquiring industry, will serve as Executive Vice President, overseeing sales and client relations and Vital's affiliates, Vital Merchant Services and Golden Retriever Systems. Marshall's background includes 15 years leading Hypercom's United States operations.

Wendy Porter has joined Vital as President of Vital Merchant Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vital. Most recently, Porter served as Executive Vice President of Moneris Solutions, a joint venture of the Merchant Services Divisions of Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank of Canada. Before that, Porter served as Senior Vice President, North American Merchant Services, for Bank of Montreal.

FYISOs Alliances
Paymentech and ThruComm Link Technologies Paymentech, a provider of payment solutions, and ThruComm, Inc., a provider of managed networking services for electronic funds transfers, have partnered to bring hospitality merchants continuous online connectivity. The ThruComm Integrator technology supplies a network connection between a merchant location and Paymentech's Advanced Data Communication solution.
Lipman Partnership Produces New Wireless POS Solution Lipman USA, Inc., a provider of POS terminal solutions, and APRIVA, Inc., a wireless solution provider, have teamed up to offer a full end-to-end wireless point-of-sale solution for ISOs, processors and merchants.

The result of the companies' joint venture is NuritGate: Powered by APRIVA. This solution combines Lipman's Nurit 3010 and 8000 wireless POS devices with APRIVA Talk, a gateway model supplying wireless flexibility in online reporting, order processing, terminal provisioning and customer management.

Lipman's 3010 and 8000 devices will process transactions through NuritGate on the Cingular or Motient network and can connect to many of the largest U.S. authorization and settlement processors.
AAMS to Provide Merchant Processing Services to IIABA InsurBanc, a full-service federal savings bank that offers competitive banking products and services to members of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA), announced a marketing agreement with ABN AMRO Merchant Services (AAMS) whereby AAMS will provide affiliates of the IIABA merchant processing capabilities with the ability to accept Visa and MasterCard payments.
KeyCorp Supplies Maine Banks with Instant ATM Network In order to provide their customers with the convenience and benefit of a large ATM network without having to actually build or maintain its infrastructure, three Maine-based banks have partnered with Cleveland-based KeyCorp, a bank-based financial services company with $81 billion in assets. Auburn Savings & Loan Association and Mechanics Savings Bank have teamed with KeyCorp to allow their customers to use any of Key's 100 ATMs in Maine with no additional fees through the agent bank program. Union Trust also has partnered with KeyCorp for customer access at any of Key's 2300 ATMs nationwide.

KeyCorp offers similar ATM services to other financial institutions in five other states.