First Data Corporation, based in Atlanta, Georgia and a worldwide leader in the payment processing industry released a prepaid cards services called SpendTrend Closed-Loop. They released the analysis records for users in the United States and compared redemption, activation, and reload rates by brands, spending and gift trends.

Merchants that offered prepaid programs were more aggressive towards the end of the year when the holiday season approached. Compared to last year, volume transaction for prepaid cards increased significantly. In the analysis, dollar volume rose from 2009 to 2010 by 8.9%. Activation transaction increased by more than 11% during the same period.

The average ticket size of most activation saw a huge decline which was a huge improvement over October’s decline rate. Many consumers bought gifts for the holiday and there was an increased in of the overall value of the prepaid closed-loop cards that were used to purchase goods and services.

First Data Corporation

TransArmor is revolutionary in that it literally changes the way companies manage and secure credit card information by offering protection of cardholder data from the time it is presented to the business to process by taking the credit card data and replacing it with a token number and also preserving the card data value for the business to operation without having information that can lead to fraud present. TransArmor offer businesses the ability to virtually reduce their cost and risk when it comes to PCI compliance without having to do much changes to the business operation or hardware

A few months ago, First Data completed a successful test pilot program for TransArmor with several merchants in more than 150 retail locations and saw that it offered a very unique way of blending encryption and tokenization technologies. This would be the first time that TransArmor tokenized commercial payments using the STAR® Network which is also owned by First Data.

Source: company press release

VeriFone Systems, Inc

It took WAY Systems about 5 years in the payment processing business to build a customer base of more than 26,000 businesses that are utilizing their mobile terminals and gateway products. VeriFone will be taking control over customer support services for WAY System’s customers and will be adding them to their PAYware Connect Gateway platform. VeriFone will also offer WAY System’s 24/7 support to all customers currently using their mobile services.

WAY has developed many relationships with resellers and has intellectual property rights and several patents in Europe, U.S. and China that will help take VeriFone’s mobile platform to the next level. One of the substantial patents WAY has been granted has to do with how the mag-stripe reader connects to mobile phones and other mobile device.

Jeff Dumbrell, the executive vice president of VeriFone, was glad that they have added WAY Systems employees and customers as part of VeriFone.

Source: company press release

BankServ

By acquiring NetDeposit, BankServ will be doubling the number of customers they have in the payment processing industry. With the combined assets of BankServ and NetDeposit, this is the largest privately held independently owned bank processing remote deposit capture transactions in the United States. More than 110,000 business locations and more than 510 banks and credit unions will be serviced with their online payment technology, SWITF,  Fedwire, check image capture, and mobile credit card processing solution.

The integration and transition process will last until the first quarter of 2011 and both brands will operate in parallel to one another. NetDeposit will continue to operate from their primary office in Salt lake City, Utah and the CEO will still run the day-to-day operations of the business

Source: company press release

Fiserv, Inc

The rules on Overdraft Protection took effect in July 2010 which will certainly impact financial institutions profit when it comes to overdraft fees. According to Mercator Advisory Group, depository institutions in the United States generate more than $31 billion per year in overdraft fees. According to Fiserv, about 20 to 55 percent of overdraft fees will affected by the regulation.

The new rules will forces credit unions and banks to create a different strategy to comply with new regulatory environment. Financial institutions need to find creative way to develop innovative products and services to offer their customers and this is where Fiserv’ Revenue Expansion come into play to help them address how Regulations E will impact them as well as the currently economic environment we live in.  Banks now need to find new revenue sources to replace the ones that will be lost from Overdraft Protection Regulation.

Fiserv has come up with three areas that address Revenue Expansion for financial institutions: Cross-Sell/Customer Loyalty Products, New Deposit Products, and Customer Liquidity Products.

Source: company press release

Intuit Inc

For merchants that are interested in utilizing this solution, Intuit GoPayment provides a very quick way for them to started processing credit card transactions on the iPhone in as little as 15 minutes after an application is completed online. The GoPayment solution can also be used with QuickBooks Mac version to help merchants save time by keeping financial data up to date.

Businesses wants to do more with Smartphone as they become an integral part of their business and mophie products provides a way for merchants to offer their customers mobile payments services that is secured.

Intuit launched GoPayment more than a year ago and the company has already processed more than $36 million transaction for businesses. The mobile applications allow for merchants to print receipts, email receipts, or text receipts to their customers after successful transactions.

Source: company press release

Hypercom Corporation

The EFTSec 2.0 platform utilizes Hypercom’s new and proven technology which, in Asia, is the country’s standard for terminal encryption. EFTSec is used by some of the largest financial institutions that have a combined asset of more than $175 billion.  According to recent studies, there are estimates that more than 3.5 million credit card payments are protected monthly in countries where banks and other financial institutions have utilized EFTSec as the standard.

For retailers, gateways, and processors using Hypercom’s EFTSec 2.0 technology on point-of-sales terminals, there are no per transaction fee associated with card present transactions.

Source: company press release

Fiserv, Inc

In order to use Mobile Source Capture, you must download an application using one of the supported smartphones on the market: Google Android, RIM Blackberry, Apple Iphone, and Windows Mobile, and a few other. When the app is downloaded onto the supported mobile phones, users take a picture of any check, front and back, to securely deposit the check into any bank account electronically without having to drive to a local bank branch or ATM to deposit checks. Mobile Source Capture will eventually be directly integrated into most of Fiserv product offering by the end of 2011 but for now the product is specifically for stand-alone use for customers.

Back in 2009, Fiserv started doing several test trials for the mobile remote deposit capture technology but has now gotten the technology to the point where multiple item deposit feature is available, single log in authentication, and a virtual stamp feature where users can virtually sign or endorse checks. The mobile deposit application evolved to also include risk mitigation solutions that allows for validation during the check image capture stage

Many people like the fact that they can just use their mobile phone to deposit checks to save time. People want to be able to bank 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Solutions like Fiserv’s Mobile Source Capture offer such opportunities as technology now allows for customers to bank the way they want, when they want from anywhere.

Source: company press release.

Fiserv, Inc

Complex Community Federal Credit Union will also be offering other products from Fiserv to the 31,000 member they service including credit and debit card processing as well as online banking solution, bill payment and lending services, document imaging services and much more. The integration and implementation of Portico will start in March 2011.

Complex Community Federal Credit Union’ Chief Executive Officer, Jason Berridge, says they selected Fiserv because the platform Fiserv offers is one of the best cutting edge on the market and they also wanted a company with a good reputation for customer satisfaction as well as a company that invests in research and development over time.

Many credit unions such as Complex Community Federal Credit Union have been outsourcing their technology operations from in-house to online solutions to uses products such as Portico to support the demand from their customer bases as well as save money due to cost associated with evolving technology platforms, maintenance cost, etc.

Portico is a very complex and sophisticated account processing solution that offers companies little footprint infrastructure and delivers on reliability. I was built on the .Net platform from Microsoft and is flexible to support growth of any company using the solution.

Source: company press release

Compass Plu

The TranzWare platform has allowed First Data to run their processes much better because it improves the services and quality of those services on the First Data Lietuva platform. The TranzWare platform very flexible for programmers to develop and implement several tools needed to resolve local problems quickly.

The TranzWare line of products allows for banks, processors, and credit unions of all types to address specific needs of customers with TranzWare Interchange by simplifying processes that are complicated by improving communication channels when it comes to international payment platform thus making the system much more enhanced and efficient. TranzWare line of products are PCI DSS and PA DSS compliant by regulations and was built in-house from the ground up with flexibility in mind that offers a single-integration infrastructure for companies using the products in any business setting.

Source: company press release