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Oct. 12th, 2012
Edition #324
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In this Issue
In Other News
This Day in History 1942
Columbus reaches the New World
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.
Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a maritime entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the gold and spice islands of Asia. At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus' day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century. However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world's size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed).
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Wal-Mart, Amex Launch Bluebird Bank Account Alternative
10/09/12 BusinessWeek  
Wal-Mart Stores and American Express are taking a big plunge into the prepaid debit-card market with a new card called Bluebird. The card has many features that are standard in regular bank accounts and seems to have remarkably few fees—which have long been the scourge of prepaid cards. Bluebird is the biggest sign yet that prepaid cards are evolving from a product for the poor and unbanked into a more mass-market offering that competes with regular checking accounts.
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Walmart's Bluebird Card Makes It a Tougher Competitor to Banks
10/08/12 BTN
After years of providing financial services, Walmart is becoming a more formidable bank competitor with the addition of American Express's checking account alternative, Bluebird. The account, which is the first non-Serve card to be built on top of Amex's digital wallet platform, lets users deposit checks by snapping a picture from their smartphones; electronically pay billers; send cash to friends; and do all of the above in a way that is nearly fee free.
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Exclusive: EBay Tests Deals on Services, Takes on Groupon
10/10/12 Reuters
EBay Inc has been quietly testing an online marketplace for deals on local services, expanding into a multibillion- dollar market currently led by Groupon Inc. EBay is also re-designing its website, adding Facebook-like features it hopes will spur more sales. Called eBay Lifestyle Deals, the offers are being run in a limited number of urban areas, including the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., according to the company.
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TransFirst® Acquires CurveNorth Corporation
10/10/12 TransFirst
TransFirst, a leading provider of transaction processing services and payment enabling technologies, has acquired substantially all of the assets of CurveNorth Corporation, a California-headquartered developer of software solutions for the merchant processing industry. CurveNorth's flagship product is Merchant-Flo, software that automates workflow and eliminates paperwork requirements for merchant boarding.
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P2P Momentum Picks up Steam in Tandem with Nascent Real-Time Settlement Trend
10/11/12 Digital Transactions
The market for person-to-person payments, which has percolated on low heat for several years, is showing signs of turning up the temperature. As an example of how far the market has come, the two major P2P payments networks, Fiserv Inc.’s Popmoney and clearXchange, a system unveiled last year by Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co., now account for roughly three-quarters of all U.S. online-banking users, according to an estimate given during a panel discussion at a retail-banking conference on Wednesday.
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Consumer Sentiment in U.S. Rises to Pre-Recession High
10/12/12 Bloomberg
Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly jumped in October to the highest level since before the recession began five years ago, raising the odds that retailers will see sales improve. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary October consumer sentiment index increased to 83.1, the highest level since September 2007, from 78.3 the prior month. The gauge was projected to fall to 78, according to the median forecast of 71 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
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A Ride in a “Square Cab,” as Mobile Payments Company Winds Down Taxicab Testing
10/11/12 All Things Digital
In NYC, there are currently 13,237 official taxicabs equipped with technology from either VeriFone or Creative Mobile Technologies to process credit card payments. But over the past six months, riders may have seen something a little different in the back of taxicabs: An iPad you can swipe your credit card through, installed by the mobile payments start-up Square. In other cities — San Francisco, Portland, Miami and Seattle, to name a few — thousands of taxi drivers rely on a small Square card reader, plugged into a smartphone, to accept riders’ credit card payments.
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Groupon Launches Breadcrumb POS Service Nationwide
10/11/12 Red Orbit
Groupon launched a service called Breadcrumb across the U.S. on Wednesday that acts as a point-of-sale service for restaurants, bars and cafes. The service was designed as a start-up founded by Seth Harris. Groupon acquired the business back in May. Breadcrumb has been offered as a test to about 100 restaurants, bars and cafes in New York, but on Wednesday the service was launched nationwide.
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Objections to Visa-Master Settlement Mount
10/09/12 CNN Money
It's been billed as the largest antitrust settlement in U.S. history, but for many of the supposed beneficiaries, it still falls short. Opposition is growing among retail groups toward the agreement inked in July by Visa, MasterCard and a group of other large financial firms in a dispute with merchants over credit card processing fees. The merchants alleged in a 2005 lawsuit that the firms had conspired to fix the processing fees -- or "swipe fees" -- at unfairly high levels.
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Starbucks Digital Tip Effort: Will It Really Translate From Cash To Mobile?
10/10/12 StorefrontBacktalk
When Starbucks announced on October 4 that it plans to add a way for shoppers to tip Starbucks’ associates through its mobile app by next summer, the chain confirmed the latest unintended mobile payment consequence. The nature of a coffee chain is such that using cash is going to be decidedly more dominant than in apparel, consumer electronics, home repair or grocery. The Starbucks stored-value card already cuts into cash payments, but the mobile app threatens an even deeper cut.
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Don't Expect 'Victor' In Mobile Wars, Isis Says
10/10/12 ISO & Agent
As new systems appear and old ones fade, ISOs are wondering who will triumph in the “mobile wallet wars.” According to the mobile-pay venture Isis, a clear winner may never emerge. Any time a competitor gains an edge, the conditions for victory shift. That fosters change, not a win or a loss. “It’s more of a journey because it’s a complicated market that is changing all of the time, and mobile payments are not going to happen overnight.”
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Debit Cards Continue to Win Market Share from Credit Cards Globally
10/09/12 BusinessWire
The report confirms the resilience of payment volumes, as global non-cash payments volumes grew by 7.1% in 2010, reaching 283 billion and early 2011 indications show an additional 8.2% growth. Payment volumes in developing markets grew at a much faster rate (16.9%), boosted by a more than 30% increase in both Russia and China. The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) grouping is no longer a valid concept in payments, with Brazil now the second-highest ranking country by payment volumes, after the U.S.
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Isis Mobile Wallet Launch on Oct. 22 in Austin and Salt Lake City According to Leaked Document
10/09/12 Android Central
Google Wallet competitor Isis could go live in trial markets in a matter of weeks, according to a leaked internal document obtained by Android Central. The doc, sent our way by an anonymous tipster, says that beginning Oct. 22, customers in Salt Lake City, UT and Austin, TX will be able to use the Isis Mobile Wallet service on "Isis Ready devices" -- though no complete list of devices was provided.
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First Data Releases September 2012 SpendTrend® Analysis
10/09/12 First Data
First Data Corporation, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing, today released its First Data SpendTrend® analysis for the full month of September 2012 compared to September 2011. SpendTrend tracks same-store consumer spending by credit, signature debit, PIN debit, EBT, closed-loop prepaid cards and checks at U.S. merchant locations. Overall dollar volume growth was 5.8%, down from August’s 7.2% growth. The moderation of growth can be attributed to tough comparables as September 2011 was a strong month with dollar volume growth of 9.5%.
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Dwolla Partners With mFoundry, Bringing Real-Time P2P Mobile Payment Capabilities To 800+ U.S. Banks
10/11/12 TechCrunch
Online and mobile digital cash network Dwolla is partnering with mobile banking and payments service provider mFoundry, the companies are announcing today at the BAI conference in Washington, D.C. This is Dwolla’s first publicly announced partnership with a financial service provider, and the deal opens its service up to mFoundry’s 800+ banks and credit unions using its cloud banking platform known as Fin.X.
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New Roam CEO Focusing Company
10/10/12 The GreenSheet
Ken Paull, new Chief Executive Officer at mobile application and gateway services provider ROAM Data Inc., said in an interview after his September 2012 appointment that his mission is to focus the company on its flagship product, ROAMpay, a mobile POS system that competes with a solution developed by Square. "I think we got a little fragmented with all the opportunities. We need to pull the reins in and focus on the ROAMpay POS acceptance program."
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MasterCard Unveils MasterCard Labs Dublin
10/10/12 BusinessWire
MasterCard today unveiled its latest MasterCard Labs office in Dublin, Ireland. The new innovation hub will lead in the development of innovation and technology for MasterCard Worldwide. The MasterCard Labs in Dublin will be the first such office in Europe and joins Purchase, New York, Singapore and St Louis, Missouri, as part of an ever growing global network of innovation excellence.
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TSYS Signs International Payments Agreement with Scotiabank
10/10/12 TSYS
TSYS announced today that it has signed a payments agreement with Scotiabank to provide processing services for Scotiabank’s banking cards portfolio in Mexico. The agreement calls for Scotiabank to convert its consumer card portfolio in Mexico to TSYS’ industry leading TS2® platform.
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SunTrust Is Latest Attack Victim
10/10/12 Bank Info Security
On Oct. 10, SunTrust Banks became the seventh U.S. financial institution apparently hit by a distributed denial of service attack orchestrated by the hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. SunTrust's website suffered intermittent glitches, suggesting the attack was either less severe than the previous attacks aimed at other institutions, whose websites were virtually shut down by the attacks, or that the bank managed the situation better.
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U.S. Jobless Claims Fall to Lowest in Four and Half Years
10/11/12 The New York Times
The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits slid last week to the lowest level in more than four and a half years, according to government data that may provide a boost to President Barack Obama a month before voters go to the polls. The Labor Department report on Thursday was the latest data to suggest improvement in the jobs market, though the surprisingly large 30,000 drop in new claims may have reflected distortions due to seasonal adjustments that are likely to be smoothed out in coming weeks.
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Directory of U.S. Merchant Acquirers – Contribute & Stand Out with Complimentary Listing
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TSG Metrics is in the process of updating and expanding one of our most prevalent reports among payments industry professionals – the Directory of U.S. Merchant Acquirers. Learn More.
Click here for survey.
This publication provided by TSG will serve to:
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Recognize high growth potential ISOs/MSPs
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Supply third-party validation/industry credibility
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Enhance valuations and exit strategy potential
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Understand the competitive positions of ISOs/MSPs within the marketplace
Incentives to Participate:
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Participants will receive a one-page synopsis comparing their data against all other participants, along with an overall ranking
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High-growth ISOs will receive recognition in the form of a ‘TSG Emerging ISO of 2012’ emblem for placement on the participants’ website and other marketing materials.
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A significant discount, gaining access to the report for $950 (normally $2,900)
One participant, selected randomly, will receive a complimentary copy of TSG’s Directory.
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