Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Further evidence that independent sales organizations are mobilizing to sell Check 21-based electronic check processing to merchants emerged last week with First American Payments L.P.'s announcement that it will re-sell remote deposit services from RDM Corp., a Waterloo, Ontario-based vendor of electronic-check solutions. Fort Worth, Texas-based First American, which provides …

This is the fifth installment of a six-part series on how Web 2.0 is likely to transform the payments business. Prior articles focused on how new providers are leading the transition from the first generation of e-commerce, where a buyer had a one-way relationship with a seller's Web site and …

Pricing is by far the biggest reason merchants cite when asked why they left their previous payment card processor, but there's more to the attrition story than meets the eye, according to a new study by Aite Group LLC. “Pricing is only the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back,” …

With the recession throwing more and more people out of work by the day, payments processors are reporting that their merchants are experiencing sharp increases in e-commerce chargebacks stemming from so-called friendly fraud. This is the fraud that results when a consumer repudiates a transaction as unauthorized in hopes of …

The message this week from the top brass at American Express Co. is: Times are bad, but no worse at AmEx than elsewhere in the payments industry. American Express, the third-largest payment card network, is still making money, though a lot less of it: $172 million in the fourth quarter, …

Credit losses at Bill Me Later Inc. are manageable despite the economic downdraft of the past year, officials at eBay Inc. told analysts recently. The Timonium, Md.-based provider of so-called transactional credit for online transactions, which eBay bought last year and paired with its PayPal online-payments unit (Digital Transactions News, …

Nearly one week after news emerged of the big data breach at Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., it remains unclear how much damage actually happened and who did it. One report suggests Heartland's breach-related legal liabilities could approach $98 million, an estimate a Heartland spokesperson dismisses as …

This is the fourth installment of a six-part series exploring the impact of Web 2.0 on the payments business. Previous articles have dealt with the transition from the first generation of eCommerce to the emerging world of social networks and highly personalized interactions utilizing Web 2.0 technology. Consumers will be …

As merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and federal investigators continue to probe the data breach Heartland disclosed on Tuesday, evidence is building that banks and credit unions around the country are reissuing cards on a mass scale as a likely result of the breach. That could give credence to …

The rapidly mounting popularity of a technology that lets businesses process checks by turning them into electronic images for deposit is giving rise to new methods that promise to relieve small businesses of the need to have either traditional check scanners or processing software. The latest example is a product …

Merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. reported on Tuesday that it has found malicious software on its processing system, the result of a breach that happened in 2008 but which Heartland says is now contained. The malware captured an unknown quantity of card numbers and expiration dates along with a …

The latest credit card charge-volume figures from the nation's top three banks show big declines, portending weak results when other issuers, merchant acquirers, and Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. report their fourth-quarter earnings in coming days. On Friday, Bank of America Corp. reported fourth-quarter purchase volume of $56.6 billion on …

Interchange, the most controversial part of credit and debit card pricing, is the subject of a background paper MasterCard Inc. posted on its Web site last week, just ahead of the inauguration on Tuesday of a new president and his administration. A MasterCard spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News the document …

This is the third installment of a six-part series on how Web 2.0 developments are likely to transform the payments business. The online marketplace is morphing to payments embedded in top-line oriented-marketing services, and integrated infrastructure where small retailers can share the scale and cost savings of bigger players. Both …

Some experts have predicted that the recession would create opportunities in the merchant-acquiring businesses, especially if independent sales organizations or other merchant processors decide to sell their portfolios or seek well-capitalized partners. Those opportunities seem to be just what venture-capital firm Austin Ventures is pursuing with the creation of Century …

Processors' experimentation with debit cards is taking on even more variety with the entry of Wilmington, Del.-based startup Maverick Network Solutions Inc. into the market. Maverick, which has brought together a handful of long-time payment-industry executives and received $1.5 million in venture funding in December, expects to begin a pilot …

Closed-loop gift cards are not the new kids on the block any more, but some retailers in 2008's holiday shopping season found ways to wring more usage out of their cards despite the faltering economy and bad press about gift cards. That's the word from a newly released market assessment …

Mobile-banking installations grew by 44% last year, and should more than double in 2009 as the technology picks up even more momentum. But the vendors serving this market, often startups without other product lines, now face potent competition from processors that have entered the business only recently and are already …

Merchant processor First Data Corp. bolstered its position as an up-and-coming provider of point-of-sale payment terminals today with the unveiling of one new and one retrofitted terminal in its FD line of hardware. The devices will help First Data shore up its offerings to check-accepting and multimerchant card-accepting locations. In …

This is the second installment of a six-part series on how Web 2.0 developments are likely to transform the payments business. Web 2.0 is still in its infancy, and skeptics about its business models abound. Meanwhile, most online merchants are still scrambling to shore up and extend their current Web …