Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

An international organization set up to promote the concept of allowing consumers to pay online merchants via Web-based banking programs plans to have a structure in place by the third quarter next year to traffic the first payments across borders. The International Council of Payment Network Operators, established earlier this …

The heat over payment card interchange and debit cards in Canada is getting high enough to melt glaciers in the Yukon. A retailer group dominated by big stores, the Retail Council of Canada (RCC), on Wednesday launched a Web site called StopStickingItToUs.com in a campaign to build merchant resistance to …

A small software company that has sued big banks and processors for years over patents it holds that relate to check-imaging and image exchange scored a series of victories in recent weeks as three banks settled with the company and agreed to license its technology. A settlement between Bank of …

Although processor Fiserv Inc. dived in to mobile banking and payments head first on Tuesday with its announcement that it would offer mobile services through three channels on one platform, it will be some time before mobile point-of-sale payments become available on the new product. Dubbed Fiserv Mobile Money, the …

Viewpointe Archive Services LLC, operator of both an electronic check-image archive as well as an image-exchange network, on Monday announced it is entering the business of check-image settlement with the acquisition of PaymentsNation, a Dallas-based company that until recently was known as National Clearing House. The deal, for which terms …

In the 18 months since NACHA introduced an electronic payment method that lets merchants convert bundles of checks in a central location, it's become clear that the method?known as back-office conversion (BOC)?isn't likely to have a big impact on retailers' paper-check volumes. That's according to Bob Meara, a senior analyst …

A big change may be in the offing for Canada's point-of-sale debit market that could bring American-style percentage-based interchange to a system whose pricing currently is based on flat fees. The change could possibly even bring Visa and MasterCard debit cards to the country for the first time. The result, …

Evidence is mounting that criminal attacks on e-commerce via keyloggers and other code that detects user credentials are growing rapidly. The number of URLs used to disseminate such malware soared to a record 6,500 in March, according to the latest report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group. That's nearly double the …

Continuing its conquest of the nation's air carriers, PayPal Inc. reports that it is now accepted on Continental Airlines Inc.'s Web site. Houston-based Continental's acceptance of PayPal leaves the nation's two largest carriers, American and United, as the only big domestic holdouts. Besides newly booked Continental, which claims to be …

Widespread problems reported by small businesses with their card-processing vendors led a startup comparison-shopping Web site for business-to-business financial services to focus on transaction processing, the co-founder says. Chicago-based Transparent Financial Services LLC, which operates as a kind of Orbitz for entrepreneurs looking for financial services, plans to add health …

It lost in Congress, so now the merchant-acquiring industry is looking to the bureaucracy to help soften the blow of a new federal reporting requirement that becomes effective in 2011. The requirement, part of the massive mortgage-relief bill President Bush signed into law a month ago, will force the card …

The dollar value loaded onto so-called network-branded or open-loop prepaid cards grew nearly 45% last year, or nine times the growth rate of closed-loop cards, according to a new report from Mercator Advisory Group. Mercator's fifth annual study of network-branded cards says the public sector is emerging as one of …

More people than ever are paying bills electronically, but banks have few ways of making money from that trend, according to separate research reports out this week. The latest consumer survey from bill-pay technology provider CheckFree, a unit of bank processor Fiserv Inc., estimates that 63.1 million Internet-using households pay …

This is the fifth installment of a six-part series exploring the growing economic tensions and structural conflicts between acquirers and issuers in the bank card business. Once upon a time, the idea of non-bank access to the Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide networks for payment innovations was about as far-fetched …

Both biller Web sites and bank or so-called consolidator sites are gaining market share, but biller sites are growing faster, according to recent research. Sites maintained by billers will account for 13% of all consumer bill payments this year, up from 11% in 2007. Consolidator sites, meanwhile, will handle 11% …

The federal judge presiding over Discover Financial Services' antitrust case against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. for lost business from would-be financial-institution partners has disposed of pre-trial motions, setting the stage for trial in a network conflict that began a decade ago. At issue is the alleged harm to Discover …

NACHA's Secure Vault Payment (SVP) system, which was built to authenticate and process online payments for merchants and billers, may be finding some acceptance among an unlikely constituency: universities and colleges. The University of Georgia will likely begin accepting tuition fees through SVP after the first of the year, followed …

Hoping to cut its paper-bill costs, AT&T Inc. has quietly made electronic bill payment available to its AT&T Mobility mobile-device customers that have deposit accounts with the more than 3,000 financial institutions that use the e-bill services of bank processor Fiserv Inc.'s CheckFree subsidiary. AT&T Mobility, formerly Cingular Wireless, and …

Universal Air Travel Plan's alternative-payments initiative added a fifth processor this week with the announcement that Acculynk Inc. will process PIN debit transactions online for airlines that choose to enable the option through UATP's switch. The news not only further's UATP's 3-year-old effort to add alternatives to credit cards for …

Visa Inc., which on Monday announced a pilot project to deliver transaction alerts to cardholders' mobile phones and e-mail inboxes, expects to launch the service some time next year as a commercial service for its members, Visa executives say. While the pilot, which involves eight banks in the U.S. and …