Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Online merchants shouldn't wait for chargebacks to indicate a problem with fraudulent orders. Instead, they should pay attention to other indicators, such as the volume of canceled orders, to anticipate whether a wave of chargebacks is about to hit. That's the argument Dave Moriarty, director of data mining at Apple …

More information is trickling out about new transaction fees planned by Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. While the main ones are slightly under 2 cents per affected transaction, when applied to the vast stream of bank card purchases they could produce more than $600 million in new revenues for the …

The breach-related troubles just keep piling on for merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., according to the acquirer's annual report filed on Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In the filing, Heartland revealed the data breach it sustained last year is under investigation not only by the U.S. …

Announcements last week from two of the major online payment systems, PayPal Inc. and Google Inc.'s Google Checkout, show the two are taking differing roads: PayPal is getting ready for a big growth spurt, while Google Checkout is changing its longstanding pricing plan with tiered rates that amount to price …

Visa Inc. has kicked breached merchant acquirers Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and RBS WorldPay Inc. off of its list of processors compliant with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI. That action sent the acquirers to a netherworld known as probation and triggered a debate in the payments industry …

Visa Inc. will quintuple the size of its Visa ReadyLink prepaid card reload network when the big money-transfer firm MoneyGram International Inc. enables its 40,000 U.S. locations to add funds to prepaid cards under a deal Visa announced Tuesday. The MoneyGram locations will make Visa's reload network nearly as big …

Hypercom Corp. anticipates that the drop in its first-quarter revenues may be larger than in the past due to volatile currency exchange rates, the deteriorating economy, and a tightening credit market, said Philippe Tartavull, chief executive and president. “It is quite clear that our industry as a whole will contract …

The nation's largest processor of e-commerce transactions this week announced its commitment to a test involving PIN debit payments on the Internet. Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC, which processes for merchants that control more than half of all U.S. transactions on the Web, expects to sign between three and five sizable …

American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services both report that enlisting bank card acquirers to grow their merchant networks is paying off. Until their initiatives started, merchants had to deal with separate customer-service staff and received separate statements for their respective AmEx or Discover accounts. That made taking brands more …

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. will be releasing additional information on the recent data breach of one of its payment-processing platforms, though “I can't tell you how soon,” says Robert Carr, Heartland's chief executive. The Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer in January announced that malicious software, or malware, had been secretly planted …

The Retail Gift Card Association is recruiting new members with the aim of building a positive image of closed-loop gift cards, getting members to follow an ethics code, and countering the bad publicity directed at gift cards in recent months by consumer groups and legislators monitoring marooned cards whose sponsor …

Among its many damaging effects, financial fraud threatens the growth of online payments and banking and could drive consumers away from banks and toward electronic payment systems they perceive as more secure, such as PayPal. Those are some of the conclusions in a new report from technology research and consulting …

The Accel/Exchange electronic funds transfer network has signed up a handful of issuers for an Internet-based PIN debit pilot that processed its first transaction, for $9.49, on Wednesday, according to Michael Kelly, general manager of the Morris Plains, N.J.-based network, a unit of Milwaukee-based bank processor Fiserv Inc. Kelly says …

Reduced buying from merchant acquirers, the stock-market downdraft, and currency fluctuations teamed up to take a big bite out of payment card terminal maker VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s latest financials. VeriFone late Tuesday reported a $182 million loss for its first fiscal 2009 quarter ended Jan. 31, and its boss predicts …

The U.S. alternative-payments market has already attracted a slew of startups over the past few years, and now it's drawing even more competition from overseas. Paymate Global Inc., the U.S. arm of Australian processor Paymate Pty Ltd., earlier this month completed its integration with eBay Inc.'s checkout system and joins …

Looking to speed up clearing time for electronic checks on the automated clearing house, The Federal Reserve Banks on Monday announced the first change to the settlement windows for the ACH network in 35 years. The change, which is set to take effect in the second quarter of next year, …

Lower interchange rates in some cases for online retailers and travel-and-entertainment merchants that accept Visa credit cards and higher bank card authorization fees are set to take effect in the coming months. The good news for merchants is that seven of the 11 Visa consumer credit card interchange rates that …

Key operating metrics posted solid gains in recent quarterly reports from two of the payment industry's specialty providers, non-bank ATM network operator Cardtronics Inc. and expedited bill-payment provider TIO Networks Corp. Houston-based Cardtronics, however, still posted a $57.9 million fourth-quarter loss, most of which originated with a one-time charge involving …

Viewpointe Archive Services LLC this week introduced two products that, the company says, respond to rising volumes of imaged checks and could smooth the way for more financial institutions to participate in end-to-end image exchange. One of the products catches mismatches between check images and the data contained in associated …

Discover Financial Services this week unveiled a teen-oriented prepaid card called Current by Discover. Current is the latest entrant in a niche that includes the Visa Buxx and Allow MasterCard, prepaid cards that may have garnered more headlines than users. But Discover says its new card has straightforward pricing and …