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May 4th, 2012
Edition #302
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In this Issue
In Other News
This Day in History 1965
Willie Mays Breaks National League Home Run Record
On May 4, 1965, San Francisco Giants outfielder Willie Mays hits his 512th career home run to break Mel Ott’s National League record for home runs. Mays would finish his career with 660 home runs, good for third on the all-time list at the time of his retirement.
Willie Howard Mays was born May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama. The "Say Hey Kid" learned baseball from his father, who played semi-professionally with a team from his steel mill. Willie joined the steel mill team at age 14, and then began his professional career at 16 with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Southern League. He played home games for the Barons from 1948 to 1950, skipping road trips during the school year so he could attend high school. Upon graduation he was signed by the New York Giants, and made his debut at the Polo Grounds on May 25, 1951. Mays went hitless in his first 12 at-bats, hitting his first big league homer in his 13th. That season, he was named Rookie of the Year and helped the Giants to the National League pennant.
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5/03/12 Digital Transactions  
Visa Inc.’s pricing plans for merchant acquirers in the wake of the Durbin Amendment have generated controversy in the acquiring industry, and now they’re attracting scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice, the leading payment card network disclosed on Wednesday. Visa said in a regulatory filing that the DoJ’s Antitrust Division on March 13 issued a so-called civil investigative demand for documents and information about PIN debit and Visa’s new Fixed Acquirer Network Fee, or FANF.
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5/02/12 ISO&Agent
It’s official. A study released May 1 by the Federal Reserve Board indicates the so-called Durbin amendment to the Dodd-Frank law has accomplished its mission of essentially halving the average debit card interchange fee acquirers pay card issuers to 23 cents from 43 cents. The problem is that the savings are not going to the intended recipients–small merchants and consumers, according to a random sampling of payment industry insiders. “It was almost childish to think that would work,” contends Joe Bizzarro, CEO of PE Systems LLC, a Philadelphia-based interchange consulting firm.
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5/01/12 Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve Board has published comparative information on the average debit card interchange fees that each payment card network charges acquirers (and indirectly merchants) and provides to debit card issuers. The data compares the 2009 baseline to 2011 (pre-Durbin) and 2011 (post-Durbin). As part of the rulemaking process, the Board collected 2009 data from payment card networks. The aggregate data provided by the networks indicated that the average interchange fee for all issuers was 43 cents. Data collected after the rule took effect show that the average interchange fee per transaction received by non-exempt issuers in the fourth quarter of 2011 declined substantially to 24 cents while the average interchange fee received by exempt issuers was 43 cents.
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5/04/12 Los Angeles Times
Hiring continued its slow pace in April as employers added a modest 115,000 jobs to their payrolls, providing more evidence that the economy has lost some momentum from early this year. The jobless rate inched down to 8.1% last month, the Labor Department said Friday, but that wasn't because more people were employed. Rather, the rate fell as more workers dropped out of the labor force. The April jobs report was highly anticipated because job growth slowed sharply in March after three strong winter months of payroll gains averaging 252,000.
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5/03/12 SunHerald
Americans are using less cash today than they did 10 years ago, according to the results of a survey released today by MasterCard. The “World Beyond Cash” survey asked Americans for their two cents about the growing trend towards a cashless society, including their spending plans for Mother’s Day and the frustrations of dealing with cash. “Commerce has changed dramatically over the past decade thanks to the internet and e-commerce, and this survey underscores that Americans are already shifting towards a cashless society,”
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5/02/12 Seeking Alpha
The mobile payment industry is still in its infancy. I believe the mobile payment industry is a multi-billion dollar, multi-year secular growth market which will have a huge impact to the bottom line of key mobile payment players. Aite Group states the volume of mobile payments will grow to over $200 billion by 2015. In 2010 mobile payment revenue was approximately $16 billion. That is an over 12-fold increase in just five years. Apple (AAPL) is a dominant leader in the smart phone market with over 35 million in smart phone sales last quarter alone. They have not entered the mobile payment market yet, but I expect them to arrive on the scene very soon and disrupt the current mobile payment landscape.
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5/02/12 US News
For some consumers, paying at the checkout line becomes a lot simpler when they can forgo the plastic card and pay with their phone. Mobile payment applications like the Isis Mobile Wallet, Google Wallet, Square, and LevelUp turn your cell phone into a payment source: Just store your debit card or credit card information on the phone and scan the device at checkout. "Consumers like the convenience factor," says Sarah Jane Hughes, a commercial law professor at Indiana University. But is this new form of payment safe? Approximately 12 percent of mobile phone owners made a mobile payment in 2011, according to a recent survey by the Federal Reserve.
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5/02/12 Newtek
Newtek Business Services, NASDAQ: NEWT, The Small Business Authority, announced the release of the SB Authority Index for March 2012 reaching 111.41 points. The SB Authority Index is up .16% from February 2012. The growth was led by Newtek’s proprietary merchant processing volume and retail sales. President and CEO, Barry Sloane said, “The SB Authority Index continues to grow modestly in the month of March. We have clearly seen a slow down in the economy particularly in the month of March versus a more robust growth in December, January and February.
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5/02/12 FoxBusiness
MasterCard Inc. (MA) removed Global Payments Inc. (GPN), the transaction processor involved in a data breach, from its list of approved service vendors, the card company said Wednesday. The move follows Visa Inc.'s (V) decision to remove the transaction processor from a similar list it maintains stemming from a breach Global Payments disclosed in late March. Global Payments said late Tuesday that multiple card brands had removed it from their list of PCI compliant-service providers.
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5/02/12 Bank Info Security
Evidence is mounting that Global Payments Inc. may have been breached months earlier than initially reported. One affected card issuer told BankInfoSecurity that Visa issued an updated alert about the breach on April 26, noting that the window for compromise could date back to June 7, 2011. Another card issuer says the window of compromise, as provided by Visa, dates back to June 11. Both issuers asked to remain anonymous. Previously, Visa's alerts indicated the breach occurred sometime between Jan. 21, 2012, and Feb. 25, 2012. But Global says it notified the affected card brands of the breach in early March, as soon as internal systems detected a compromise.
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5/02/12 StorefrontBacktalk
Mistakes made by careless or incompetent payment application installers or system integrators have led to far too many data breaches over the years. In each case, even though the reseller or integrator made the mistake, the merchant bore the ultimate responsibility. Unfortunately, system resellers and integrators formerly fell in a governance gap in PCI, and their actions were outside the PCI Council’s jurisdiction. PCI Columnist Walter Conway says “were,” because that situation is about to change.
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5/02/12 First Data
First Data Corporation today reported its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2012. Consolidated revenue for the first quarter was $2.6 billion, up $20 million, or 1%, compared to a year ago on an increase in merchant acquiring revenue partially offset by a $71 million decline in debit network fees. These fees are passed directly to customers and therefore did not impact operating income. Adjusted revenue, which excludes certain items including debit network fees, increased $78 million, or 5% year-over-year to $1.6 billion.
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5/02/12 MasterCard
MasterCard Incorporated today announced financial results for the first quarter of 2012. The company reported net income of $682 million, up 21%, and earnings per diluted share of $5.36, up 25%, in each case versus the year-ago period. Net revenue was $1.8 billion, a 17% increase versus the same period in 2011. On a constant currency basis, net revenue increased 19% compared to the same period in 2011. Net revenue growth was driven by the impact of the following.
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5/01/12 TransFirst
PayFox, a mobile credit and debit card processing solution, has expanded its capabilities to include more mobile devices. Powered by TransFirst®, a leading provider of transaction processing services and payment enabling technologies, PayFox now allows even more merchants to accept payments wherever they do business. “The expansion of PayFox to multiple mobile devices gives our merchants the opportunity to advance their businesses to new levels,” says John Shlonsky, TransFirst’s president and CEO.
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5/01/12 Econsultancy
While daily deals giant Groupon deals continues to struggle with being a publicly-traded company, its biggest competitor, Amazon-backed LivingSocial, continues to try to prove that the daily deal model is viable when done right. One of the biggest challenges in doing that is getting daily deal customers to return to the merchants that lured them in with a bargain. Indeed, much of the criticism that has emerged around the daily deal model is that many if not most daily deal customers hop from business to business in search of the best deal.
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5/01/12 Heartland Payment Systems
Heartland Payment Systems, Inc.,announced GAAP net income of $13.8 million, or $0.34 per share, for the three months ended March 31, 2012. Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Earnings per Share were $15.7 million and $0.39, respectively, for the quarter ended March 31, 2012, compared to Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Earnings per Share of $9.2 million and $0.23, respectively, for the quarter ended March 31, 2011. Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Earnings per Share are non-GAAP measures that are detailed later in this press release in the section “Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures.”
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5/02/12 Fiserv
NACHA Booth #209 — Fiserv, Inc., a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, announced today that it has partnered with Earthport, a specialist in cross-border payments services, to provide a solution for international payments processed through the automated clearing house (ACH). This partnership will enable Fiserv clients to seamlessly process low value, cross-border payments through PEP+®, an online, real-time solution for originating and receiving ACH payments.
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5/01/12 BusinessWire
The Bancorp Bank (“Bancorp”), is pleased to announce a new relationship between PayPal and Bancorp to provide P2P payment services to consumers via Bancorp’s affinity relationships. By utilizing PayPal’s platform and technology, Bancorp will enable its affinity relationships with the ability to provide electronic P2P payments to their customers. “We saw the market opportunity in P2P payment services and the benefits it could bring to our affinity customers and now we have the right partner."
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4/30/12 SunGard
SunGard today released the results of a recent Corporate B2B Payments Study: “Consolidated Payables Solutions: What do Corporations Want from their Banking Partners?”. The study captured perspectives from 171 respondents representing a wide cross-section of corporations from multiple industries and ranging in size from under $250 million to over $5 billion in annual revenue. Among the key findings, 45% of those responding to the question said they would be willing to leave their current bank if they believed another bank offered better payment services.
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5/01/12 PR Newswire
With over 10 million users, Pinterest's base is intensely loyal, spending 88 minutes bookmarking every day. They are also social, driving more third-party traffic than Google, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. "It just seems like the perfect place for social commerce," said Ted Novak. "Pin2Sell makes it incredibly easy and integrated. Just take a picture, enter the price and your PayPal account, and your Pin can be purchased by anybody who is interested in it." A growing market, social commerce is expected to reach $30 billion in annual sales by 2015.
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