Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

  n The private beta, as Dwolla dubs its test, will open up to consumers within “ a couple of months,” Charise Flynn, the Des Moines, Iowa-based company’s chief operating officer, tells Digital Transactions News. n About 60 people are involved in the test currently, Flynn says, though most of …

Payments fraud against companies moderated during 2011, with the share of companies experiencing payments fraud falling to the lowest level since 2004, according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ latest annual study of corporate payments fraud. Nevertheless, the level of fraud remained elevated, with the majority of organizations reporting attempted …

Amazon.com Inc. quietly killed its PayPhrase online-authentication service on Feb. 20, not quite two-and-a-half years after introducing the system. The PayPhrase credentials system allowed online shoppers to check out using only a word or phrase of their choosing and a PIN that they had registered with the Amazon Payments service. …

As the prepaid card market matures, more data are emerging about surprising consumer behavior regarding prepaid cards or that challenge the conventional wisdom. For example, research commissioned by big processor First Data Corp., a major player in the prepaid space, found that given a choice between taking a gift or …

New data from automated clearing house governing body NACHA reaffirm the continuing gains of electronic bill payment and the long-term decline in consumer check writing to pay bills. NACHA’s report for 2011’s fourth quarter says that transactions under the so-called WEB standard entry class code for Internet bill-payment debits grew …

The news leaked earlier this week, but PayPal confirmed on Thursday it has created a mobile-acceptance product to compete with the myriad such services already on the market from hardware and software companies, as well as merchant processors. Still, PayPal’s product, called PayPal Here, may stand out from the crowd …

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Financial institutions have much to gain from fees and cost savings if they offer person-to-person payments and get it right, according to representatives of three leading P2P networks who spoke on a panel at a banking conference on Monday. The keys to getting this relatively nascent payment form right lie …

With banks struggling to find their way in the new Durbin era that puts controls on their debit and prepaid card operations, the door is opening wider for American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services to win new prepaid card business, according to two attorneys familiar with payment card interchange …

With rumors swirling that it is close to launching a mobile-acceptance device for small merchants, PayPal Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a digital wallet that offers a raft of new features at a time when major rivals like Google Inc. and Visa Inc. are introducing new wallets. PayPal’s product, which it …

Countless news reports have reported or speculated about what Google Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Facebook Inc. have done or might do in mobile payments. Consumers, however, don’t rate these four companies as highly as they do their own banks or traditional payment companies in trustworthiness involving their financial …

Accusing Visa Inc. of a “lack of regard” for its members, the Electronic Transactions Association merchant-acquiring trade group sent a letter to the card network March 7 asking that it delay implementation of a new fixed fee until acquirers have time to reprogram their back offices and make other adjustments. …

n The earliest players in the increasingly crowded market for mobile-acceptance applications were software and hardware providers like Intuit Inc., Square Inc., and VeriFone Systems Inc. Lately, though, merchant processors like North American Bancard and Heartland Payment Systems have been getting into the game. n Heartland, which released an Android …

Surpassing the 1-billion mark for the first time represents “a real milestone for the industry,” Brian Russell, an SPA representative, said on Monday at the Cartes North America conference in Las Vegas. Russell is a senior vice president at Giesecke & Devrient, one of the SPA’s members. The other five …

Experts may well have proclaimed 2012 to be the Year of Mobile Payments, what with digital wallets and other product introductions proliferating seemingly by the day, but at least some researchers are starting to ask a key question: Do consumers really want mobile payments? According to preliminary data, the answer …

n Square Inc. kept up the pressure on the traditional merchant-acquiring industry on Monday by introducing a souped-up version of its iPad app for brick-and-mortar merchants called Square Register with enhanced business-management functions. Meanwhile, the Isis mobile-payments venture announced it has struck deals with the major U.S. point-of-sale terminal makers …

n n Competition from Square? No problem, according to VeriFone Systems Inc. chief executive Douglas G. Bergeron. n “We’ve had competitors for 30 years,” Bergeron said in response to an analyst’s inquiry about how he sees the competitive risk to VeriFone, the leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker, from Square Inc., …

Dissatisfied with the current crop of mobile-payments systems from tech companies, cell-phone providers, card networks and banks, a group of U.S. retailers is embarking on its own plan to bring smart-phone payments to their customers. The merchants stress that their venture will not necessarily be based on near-field communication (NFC), …

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Building on its $465 million acquisition in September of person-to-person payments service CashEdge Inc., bank processor Fiserv Inc. on Wednesday announced it will combine CashEdge’s Popmoney with Fiserv’s  ZashPay P2P payment networks under the Popmoney name. The combined network, which also will be integrated into Fiserv’s CheckFree RXP payment suite, …