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January 22, 2010 New to NewsFilter? Click here to subscribe. In this Issue In Other News This Day in History (1973) Supreme Court legalizes abortion In a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Roe v. Wade that women, as part of their constitutional right to privacy, can terminate a pregnancy during its first two trimesters. Only during the last trimester, when the fetus can survive outside the womb, would states be permitted to regulate abortion of a healthy pregnancy.
The controversial ruling, essentially reversing a century of anti-abortion legislation in the United States, was the result of a call by many American women for control over their own reproductive processes. Although defended by the Supreme Court on several occasions, the legalization of abortion became a divisive and intensely emotional public issue. The debate intensified during the 1980s, and both pro-choice and pro-life organizations strengthened their membership and political influence. Click to read more. Advertisement
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TabbedOut: Pay Tabs from your Phone 1/17/10 Mobile-Financial ATX Innovation CEO and Co-Founder, Rick Orr, speaks with Mobile-Financial About Launching Mobile Payment Services for the hospitality industry. ATX Innovation Inc., headquartered in Austin, TX, has launched its flagship product, TabbedOut, to allow patrons to pay for bar and restaurant tabs from their phone. Created by a local group of entrepreneurs with expertise in card payments and security software, ATX Innovation has focused its initial efforts on developing and marketing mobile products for the hospitality industry. Click to read more. Haiti Earthquake Puts Mobile Payments in the Spotlight 1/18/10 Digital Transactions While a disaster of massive proportions, the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti nevertheless is boosting online giving and mobile payments in particular as U.S. donors seek the fastest way of putting their donations to work in the stricken country. As of 9 a.m. Eastern time Monday, more than 2 million donors had given $21 million in $10 increments to the American Red Cross’s Haitian earthquake-relief effort, according to Tony Aiello, chief executive of mGive, the technology platform of Mobile Accord Inc. Click to read more. Mobile App Wars' Impact on the Payments Biz 1/19/10 PYMNTS.com The application wars in the mobile phone business are heating up. They will result in significant threats and opportunities for the payments biz. Just recently the Apple iPhone topped more than 100,000 apps. It was just two years ago, on October 17th, that Steve Jobs announced that Apple was going to allow third-party developers to build apps for the iPhone. They pushed out a software developer kit back in February 2008. Click to read more. Forget Your Well-Thought-Out Mobile Strategy: You Now Need Three 1/21/10 StorefrontBacktalk The most popular parlor game in retail tech circles these days is plotting out mobile strategies. For some, that strategy may be little more than “not now.” But the simple act of trying to craft a single, coherent mobile strategy may itself be flawed. Most retailers now need to prep three distinct strategies for dealing with the three separate ways mobile devices will be used. Click to read more. Heartland Breach: State of Payments Security 1 Year Later 1/21/10 BankInfoSecurity It has now been one year since the Heartland Payments System breach was made public. What lessons have been learned and what more needs to be done to improve the security of the payment industry? We asked four information security experts for their take on Heartland: One year later. Click to read more. Credit card giant says proposed debit code gives merchants too much clout 1/18/10 The Canadian Press The federal government's proposed code of conduct for Canada's credit and debit card system is too weighted in favour of merchants at the expense of consumer choice, Visa Canada alleged Monday, the deadline for comments on the plan. Four of Canada's five biggest banks issue Visa cards while Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO) and many non-bank issuers support MasterCard, Visa's chief rival in that business. Click to read more. Retail Credit Card Defaults Near-Record High 1/19/10 Business-Journal U.S. consumers defaulted on store-branded credit cards at near-record levels during the holiday shopping season, with 2010 likely to bring more of the same trend, according to Fitch Ratings. One in every $8 of receivables was written off as uncollectable during the November collection period, and it is expected that retail card charge-offs will remain elevated throughout the first half of this year. Click to read more. Mobile payments firm Boku gets $25M in spending money 1/19/10 Mobile.Venturebeat.com Boku is on a roll. The mobile payments company bought two companies, combined them and, in June, launched its service, which lets people pay for online goods and games with their mobile phone accounts. Now it has raised $25 million in a third round of funding. The San Francisco-based company was one of the finalists in our startup competition at MobileBeat. Now its service is available in 58 countries, and it has more than 1,000 online merchants, game publishers and others using its service. Click to read more. Elavon Acquires Citizens National Bank Merchant Processing Portfolio 1/19/10 BusinessWire Elavon, a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) and a leading global payments provider, has purchased the merchant processing portfolio of Citizens National Bank, a community bank headquartered in Sevierville, Tenn. and operating locally in Sevier, Knox and Jefferson counties. Under the terms of the agreement, Elavon will extend its full line of flexible payment solutions to the bank’s more than 300 existing merchant accounts, while also supporting a 10-year alliance agreement for new merchant services referred through the bank’s 18 community branches. Click to read more. Payment Alliance buys Comdata Processing business 1/20/10 MSN.com Payment Alliance International Inc., a provider of credit card and check-processing services and automated teller machine management, has purchased the merchant-processing business of Comdata Processing Systems, which includes 5,000 merchant locations in the United States. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Click to read more. PayPal Payments Propel eBay to Profit 1/20/10 PCMag.com The company's fourth quarter revenue came in at $2.4 billion, up 16 percent from the same time period last year and up from $2.23 billion in the third quarter 2008. Net income was $1.4 billion, up from $367 million last year. EBay earned $112 million in revenue from Skype during the fourth quarter. EBay acquired Skype in 2005, but in September 2009, a small group of venture capital funds acquired a majority stake in the VoIP provider, a deal that was completed in November. Without Skype, eBay said it's revenue would have been up 19 percent. Click to read more. TSYS Reports Decline In Q4 Profit; Shares Down 1/20/10 RTTNews.com Wednesday, electronic payment processing services provider Total System Services Inc. (TSS: News ) reported a decline in profit for the fourth quarter. The decline was mainly due to a drop in revenue from electronic payment processing services. Following the news, the company's shares fell by 13% in the after hours trade. Click to read more. AmEx 4Q Net Up; Loan-Loss Provisions Down 47% 1/21/10 Wall Street Journal American Express Co. (AXP) said customers increased spending by 8% in the fourth quarter, sending the company's quarterly net income surging to $716 million. The results offer insight into the spending patterns and economic outlook of the well-heeled consumers and companies that make up the bulk of AmEx's customer base. The increase in spending reverses a trend of quarters of decline when budget-conscious consumers scaled back spending amid the recession. Click to read more. New Partnership Delivers First-Ever Unified Payments Processing Platform to the Restaurant Industry 1/19/10 BusinessWire The National Restaurant Association®, state restaurant associations and Heartland Payment Systems®, one of the nation’s largest payments processors, are forming a strategic partnership that will deliver the first-ever unified payments processing platform to the restaurant industry. Click to read more. UK debit card use to exceed cash for first time 1/19/10 Financial Times Debit card spending is on track to overtake cash as a payment method in the UK this year, according to Visa Europe, the card processor. The group, owned by the banks for which it processes payments, said on Tuesday that 77 per cent of its business was now done with debit cards, rather than credit cards, after a 10 per cent rise in debit card transactions last year. Click to read more. MasterCard Looks To Prepaid For New Growth 1/14/10 Investor's Business Daily With the U.S. economy on the mend, a healthier consumer has emerged and begun dipping into his wallet, but is this time spending more wisely. Americans cut credit-card use by nearly 19% in November, the largest drop since December 1974, the Federal Reserve said. Revolving credit fell by 10% on average in the prior two months. Credit-card use is growing slower than debit-card transactions, with cash-strapped consumers reluctant to run balances. Instead, shoppers with a desire to stick to a budget opt to pay with debit, which draws cash directly from bank accounts. Click to read more.
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