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Oct. 26th, 2012
Edition #326
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In this Issue
In Other News
This Day in History 1881
Shootout at the OK Corral
On this day in 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
After silver was discovered nearby in 1877, Tombstone quickly grew into one of the richest mining towns in the Southwest. Wyatt Earp, a former Kansas police officer working as a bank security guard, and his brothers, Morgan and Virgil, the town marshal, represented "law and order" in Tombstone, though they also had reputations as being power-hungry and ruthless. The Clantons and McLaurys were cowboys who lived on a ranch outside of town and sidelined as cattle rustlers, thieves and murderers. In October 1881, the struggle between these two groups for control of Tombstone and Cochise County ended in a blaze of gunfire at the OK Corral. Click here to read more.
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Economic Stat of the Week: Q3 GDP Rises 2%
10/26/12 Bloomberg  
The economy in the U.S. expanded more than forecast in the third quarter, paced by a pickup in consumer spending, a rebound in government outlays and gains in residential construction. Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at a 2 percent annual rate after climbing 1.3 percent in the prior quarter, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington.
Click here for a chart presenting the components of GDP by Quarter (Source: TheBlaze)
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GDP Sign of More Modest Growth: Analysts Quotes
10/26/12 MarketWatch
“The bottom line is that the Commerce Department assessed that the economy performed considerably better in Q3 than I had expected. Real domestic demand increased at a 2.3% annualized rate, more than a full percentage point better than I had forecast and the fastest growth in nearly 2 years. Does that feel right to you? Me neither. I would look for the headline figure to creep down from 2.0% to something closer to my estimate of around 1½% when all of the data are in.”
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Swipe-Fee Trick or Treat?
10/25/12 CSP
A federal judge will give opponents of a proposed settlement on credit-card swipe fees until the end of the month to voice their opinions. At the same time, the judge said he is likely to give preliminary approve the proposal, pending the feedback. U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson on Wednesday said the pending $7.25-billion settlement between merchants and Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and several large banks appears to meet requirements for preliminary approval.
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ETA CEO Jason Oxman's Op-Ed in The Hill, $7.2 Billion Swipe Fees Settlement is Not Enough for Some
10/22/12 TheHill
Why would some class-member retailers complain about a $7.2 billion settlement? It’s the question many are asking after a few retail trade associations and a couple vocal big-box stores urged their fellow merchants to object to the largest antitrust settlement in the history of the United States. The deal both sides agreed to in July essentially ended the seven-year battle between retailers and the major credit card networks over interchange rates.
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Interchange Settlement Opposition Intensifies, But It’s Not Likely To Matter
10/24/12 StorefrontBacktalk
As the interchange fee proposed settlement winds its way to a federal judge’s decision—which is not expected before early next year, followed by the inevitable appeals—retailers are re-attacking the deal, with most of the named plaintiffs abandoning the settlement. But it’s not clear how much of a difference it will make. The problem with retailers opposing the settlement is that there is no current better alternative.
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Visa Plays It Safe and Smart with New CEO
10/24/12 American Banker
Scharf — a JPMorgan Chase (JPM) executive once considered a favorite to succeed Jamie Dimon as chief executive — was named Wednesday as the replacement for retiring Visa CEO Joseph Saunders. He starts next week. The business is familiar to Scharf, who spent several years on Visa's board and oversaw JPMorgan's massive consumer payments businesses as head of its retail bank. He lost that role last year and moved to an internal private-equity group in what was seen as a demotion.
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Under Fire, MasterCard Bids to Smooth Over Data Privacy Fears
10/26/12 Finextra
MasterCard has moved to soothe consumer privacy fears following a rash of headlines about its plans to sell card transaction data to large retailers and corporations. The card scheme has been stung into action by a spate of negative publicity and media scare stories on the activities of its Advisors Media Solution unit, which repackages card transaction data for data mining purposes.
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Jones Predits ISOs Will Remain at Payments Hub
10/25/12 The GreenSheet
ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) will remain at the center of the payments hub even as the tent surrounding that hub grows larger to include more players, SignaPay Ltd. President Kevin Jones said in an interview with The Green Sheet conducted shortly after he spoke at the Mobile Payments Conference in New York City in October 2012. "For more than 20 years, business owners have been getting all their payments needs met by banks or processors," Jones said, reiterating what he said at the conference.
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Can ISOs Make Money With Micromerchants?
10/24/12 ISO & Agent
Is tiny the next big thing for ISOs? Or is bigger better? That’s the dilemma ISOs have been facing ever since Square Inc. came on the scene two years ago, promoting card acceptance to babysitters, gardeners and one-man-band merchant outfits. Square’s success with these so-called micromerchants has left ISOs wondering whether there’s any money to be made on the smallest of businesses.
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Barnes & Noble POS Breach Highlights Fraud Trend
10/25/12 Bank Info Security
In the latest in a series of point-of-sale attacks plaguing U.S. retailers, Barnes and Noble Booksellers has confirmed a breach hit 63 of its locations from California to Rhode Island. Card issuers say the incident highlights the card fraud detection and prevention challenges they face. One issuer affiliated with an East Coast institution says connecting the fraud dots in this breach, which issuers have been monitoring since the spring, required high-level cross-channel detection.
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Isis Launches with Nearly 1,000 Merchant Locations, Nine Smart Phones
10/22/12 Digital Transactions
The carrier-backed Isis mobile-payment service debuted in a low-key launch Monday in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City with almost 1,000 merchant locations participating and its near-field communication (NFC) system workable on nine smart-phone models. Digital Transactions News counted 493 merchant locations in the Salt Lake area and 470 in Austin, for a total of 963.
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ISIS Austin Launch Comes as a Surprise to Austin
10/23/12 GigaOm
Isis, launched on Monday in Austin, Texas and in Salt Lake City, Utah, but you wouldn’t know from several merchants around town. Many local merchants had no clue they were now able to accept Isis payments, or even knew what the program was. After getting told on Tuesday that my handset wasn’t supported under the Isis framework, and then asking a variety of merchants if I could use Isis there, I realized that this launch is softer than a goose down pillow.
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Payment Alliance International Named a Fast 50 Company
10/23/12 PAI
Payment Alliance International (PAI), a leader in electronic payment processing solutions, has been recognized as a Fast 50 company by Business First of Louisville for the fourth consecutive year. Businesses ranked in the Fast 50 represent the fastest growing companies in the 13-county greater Louisville area. To be eligible for the award, companies must be independent, for profit, privately held, and have realized at least $1 million in annual revenue for each of the last three years.
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FrontStream Payments Launches MerchantGiving Program in Partnership with FirstGiving
10/22/12 FrontStream
FrontStream Payments, Inc., announced that it is launching MerchantGiving, a pilot charitable giving program that allows any merchant with a web presence to easily add a donation button benefitting the charity of their choice. This move represents the first merchant-facing product development arising from FrontStream’s recent acquisition of FirstGiving, an online fundraising platform focused on helping nonprofits and their supporters meet and exceed fundraising goals.
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Square Arrives in Canada
Square 10/24/12
Canada is Square’s first market outside the US. Over 2 million individuals and businesses can already accept credit cards with Square, and Square is processing over US$8 billion in annualized payments. “We are focused on making commerce easy for everyone. Square builds free tools for local businesses of all sizes and types to thrive,” said Alyssa Cutright, VP of International for Square.
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Square Relocating Amid Plans to More Than Double Staff
10/22/12 Bloomberg
Square Inc., a startup that plans to double its workforce by the end of next year, is moving its headquarters to San Francisco’s Central Market neighborhood, joining an expanding group of technology companies in the area. Square intends to occupy 150,000 square feet (13,900 square meters) at 1455 Market St. by mid-2013. “We’re only taking a couple of floors to start, but we have the option to expand into significant portions of the building,” Komuves said in an interview.
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Amazon Posts Loss on Spending, LivingSocial Stake
10/26/12 BusinessWeek
Amazon’s third-quarter loss includes a charge of $169 million, or 37 cents a share, related to its stake in daily-deal website LivingSocial, which lost value as consumers and retailers soured on Internet coupons. Amazon invested $175 million in the coupon service in 2010, which means it has since lost 95 percent of its value, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
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Can Mobile Wallets Boost Point of Sale Loyalty Programs?
10/24/12 BTN
Dominic Hofer believes loyalty programs work better when the perk "follows" consumers. In other words, when the consumer doesn't have to seek out a specific retailer to cash in on the reward - he or she can redeem anywhere. This makes smartphones a vital tool to spread his firm's model of turning loyalty points into cash that can be used at a variety of online and brick and mortar retailers.
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American Express Adds to iZettle's Series B Funding
10/23/12 Mobile Payments Today
Swedish mobile POS company iZettle has grabbed American Express as an investor, adding Amex to its recently announced Series B round of funding. Previously announced investors in that round include Greylock Partners, Northzone, MasterCard, and SEB Private Equity, as well as returning Series A investors Index Ventures and Creandum.
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TSYS Reports Operating Income Growth of 12.0% and EPS of $0.32 for the Third Quarter
10/23/12 TSYS
TSYS today reported results for the third quarter of 2012. For the quarter, basic earnings per share was $0.32, an increase of 5.7% over 2011. Revenues before reimbursable items were $406.1 million and operating income was $90.9 million, increases of 4.1% and 12.0%, respectively, as compared to 2011. Total revenues for the quarter were $468.1 million, an increase of 1.8% over 2011, and were impacted by a decrease of $7.6 million in reimbursable items.
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First Data Launches Rapid ConnectSM for Software Developers and Merchants
10/22/12 First Data
First Data Corporation, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing, today launched First Data® Rapid ConnectSM, a new technology layer that enables simplified integration to First Data. Rapid Connect provides software developers and direct-connect merchants with a streamlined way to create, test, certify and deliver payment-rich applications all through a single interface to enable customers to pay any way and anywhere they choose.
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Vantiv Accelerates Expansion of Healthcare Payment Processing Services Through Agreement with nTelagent
10/22/12 PR Newswire
Vantiv, Inc, a leading provider of payment processing services and related technology solutions for merchants and financial institutions of all sizes, announced today that it has entered into a co-marketing agreement with nTelagent, Inc., based in Nashville, Tennessee. nTelagent provides pre-registration and point-of-service payment solutions for acute care providers across the United States.
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With MassPay, Dwolla Takes On PayPal By Offering Lower Fees, Support For More Recipients
10/22/12 TechCrunch
Following a recent partnership with mFoundry which saw digital cash network Dwolla introducing more tools for banking partners, the startup is on the move again with the launch of a new service designed to encourage adoption among business customers. Called “MassPay,” Dwolla’s latest addition offers businesses a faster and simpler alternative to check-writing and wire transfers, by allowing them to pay up to 2,000 people at once.
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Target to Sell Credit Card Business to TD Bank
10/24/12 AP
Target Corp. on Tuesday said it reached a deal to sell its entire consumer credit card business to TD Bank Group, ending an almost two-year search for a buyer. The discounter, based in Minneapolis, said the sale price is equal to the gross value of the outstanding receivables at the time of closing. Target's portfolio currently has a gross value of about $5.9 billion.
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LightSpeed and Braintree Announce Partnership Agreement
10/22/12 BusinessWire
LightSpeed, a leading software company that helps retailers reinvent in-store shopping, and Braintree, the fastest growing payments platform for online and mobile commerce, announced a partnership agreement to launch a flexible monthly payment option for retailers. A first for the retail industry, this new Monthly Maintenance Plan, is designed to help retailers manage their overall cost structure.
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Sage Releases Fourth Business Index
10/24/12 Sage
The Sage Group plc , releases the results of its fourth Sage Business Index – International Business Insights. Polling nearly 11,000 small and medium sized companies in 15 countries, the Index shows an across-the-board decline in confidence since the last report in March 2012. Looking at local market (country) confidence, there is a significant fall of nearly five points, from 47.26 in March 2012 to 42.47 this time.
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Holiday Shopping Payment Preferences – Unwrapped
10/25/12 Litle
Would people rather use cash or credit? Why do people use their credit cards? Is anyone paying with mobile? These are just some of the questions we set out to answer and the only way to really understand consumers’ intentions is to ask them. So we did. Today we released the results of an independent consumer survey to determine payment trends this holiday shopping season.
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A New Version Of Google Wallet Is 'Coming Soon'
10/22/12 Business Insider
Google has quietly updated the website for Google Wallet, its mobile-payments service, to advertise "the next version of Google Wallet, coming soon." Visitors can request an invite. We did, and Google asked us what kind of device we used—offering a choice of iPhone, Android, or "other." That suggests that Google is getting away from its earlier dependence on special hardware on Android phones and is looking to broaden Wallet's acceptance among consumers and merchants.
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Directory of U.S. Merchant Acquirers – Contribute & Stand Out with Complimentary Listing
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.
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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