Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

After months of inactivity on interchange regulation, the U.S. House of Representatives judiciary committee on Wednesday held a hearing on one bill advocated by national merchant groups. And while the committee took no action, one merchant group views the hearing as a hopeful sign that legislation will be passed. The …

Capping a process that began last fall, NACHA announced a partner on Monday to help commercialize a system it has been piloting that lets consumers receive and pay bills electronically through the automated clearing house network. The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, a New York City-based company whose Electronic Payments …

The founders of the much-hyped Square Inc. payments system may have wowed a full-house crowd of bankers on Monday, but they added little to public understanding of how their product will actually work and how it will stack up competitively with similar offerings for mobile merchants. While polite and talkative …

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. on Wednesday said its PayPal Inc. unit has generated more than $30 million in payments so far on the open platform it introduced in November. Thousands of developers have now written applications using application programming interfaces PayPal has introduced for the platform, eBay officials said, allowing …

Remote deposit capture by means of smart phones, a technology that seemed futuristic only a year ago, is rapidly taking root, but questions remain about smart-phone adoption, security, and the type of financial institution for which it makes sense. Two recent studies, one of which was released this week, document …

The cashless vending machine payment market is about to get more competitive. Apriva Inc., a specialist in wireless payment technology, this week introduced its Apriva Vend system. With it, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Apriva is throwing its hat into a ring dominated by USA Technologies Inc., which says it welcomes the new …

Square Inc., the new payment system from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has adjusted its merchant pricing less than three weeks after its debut. Merchants will pay more on card-present transactions under $100 and less on bigger sales compared with the original plan. Card-not-present transactions, however, will cost more until a …

In a move calculated to expand its business in e-commerce and mobile transactions, Visa Inc. on Wednesday said it will buy CyberSource Corp., an online gateway and merchant acquirer, for $2 billion in cash. The deal, which is expected to close by Sept. 30, brings together the world's largest payment …

After five months of discussion, the Canadian government is out with the final draft of its Code of Conduct for the payments industry. The merchant-friendly code is supposedly voluntary, but proposed legislation could force it upon payments companies that don't adopt it on their own by May 17. “Payment card …

The growing interest of private-equity firms in merchant processors showed itself again Wednesday when the big independent sales organization Mercury Payment Systems Inc. disclosed that Silver Lake would take a 60% interest in the company. Meanwhile, private-equity executives were out in force at the Electronic Transactions Association annual meeting in …

They've ebbed and flowed over the years, but attempts by states to regulate interchange and payment card acceptance rules are definitely flowing, according to merchant-acquiring executives. “It seems like every month we get a new bill introduced in a state legislature,” said panelist Nicholas W. Baxter, senior vice president at …

As smaller merchants struggle with data-security requirements set by the bank card networks, some security firms are working on ways to simplify compliance. An example is Panoptic Security Inc., a Salt Lake City, Utah-based company that distributes its software through independent sales organizations and acquiring banks. It has started talking …

ViVOtech Inc., perhaps best known as a maker of readers that enable contactless card transactions, this week plunged further into the point-of-sale business with the introduction of a PIN pad capable of processing contactless payments. The device, known as the ViVOpay 8100, brings the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company into closer …

MasterCard Inc. announced a notable pact with a technology company Friday that the No. 2 payment card network says would drive e-commerce transaction volume. That news, however, was overshadowed Monday morning when MasterCard announced that Ajay Banga, the company's president and chief operating officer, would replace long-time chief executive Robert …

Independent sales organizations and financial institutions that deploy ATMs have suspected for weeks that MasterCard Inc. planned to cut the interchange income allowed on withdrawal transactions on its Cirrus network, but now the total cost of the move is becoming clear. The hit to U.S. ISOs alone could amount to …

The use of two-dimensional bar-code technology for mobile payments appears to be picking up momentum. On the heels of a major expansion of the technology, announced last week by Starbucks Coffee Co. and Target Corp., a startup company this week announced it is launching a so-called private beta for a …

Acculynk Inc., a processor of PIN debit transactions that take place on merchant Web sites, announced this week it is adding the capability of processing credit and signature-debit transactions as well. The new service, called PaySecure Plus, will rely on processor Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, to handle credit …

More than a fifth of independent sales organizations claim to be ready to change their sponsor merchant-acquiring bank, according to a new Aite Group LLC report about ISOs' relationships with their vendors. A smaller but still substantial number also are likely to change some of their other vendors. From July …

A soft economy didn't prevent automated clearing house transaction volumes from growing last year, though the rate of increase slowed, according to new data from NACHA?The Electronic Payments Association. The Herndon, Va.-based governing body of the ACH reports total transactions rose 2.6% to 18.76 billion from 18.29 billion in 2008. …

Pressure from the down economy is pushing more online merchants to seek out ways of selling to overseas customers, creating an opportunity for startups like Adyen Inc., a Netherlands-based online payments gateway that announced this week it has started operations in the U.S. Gateways funnel payments for online merchants to …