Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

With its announcement on Thursday that it is working with a U.K. provider to enable mobile access to credit card accounts in the U.S., Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) has joined rival payments processors First Data Corp. and Metavante Corp. in entering the nascent but highly promising business of mobile …

Electronic-payment security experts predicted fraudsters would turn their attention to less-guarded telephone-based banking systems as a result of banks' efforts to beef up online-banking security in the wake of federal regulations promulgated in 2005. Now comes a new study about identity fraud, which, while not showing a causal relationship, gives …

In an effort related to a broader initiative to tighten risk management in the automated clearing house network, NACHA this week announced its voting membership has approved a rule that requires companies that originate transactions to identify themselves with names their customers will recognize. The new rule, which goes into …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Hypercom Corp. on Monday said it is talking with France-based Ingenico about the $332 million buyout offer Ingenico made last week, an offer that came at a time when Phoenix, Ariz.-based Hypercom is trying to buy the POS terminal unit of another French company, Thales S.A. Ingenico …

LendingTools.com, a Wichita-Kansas-based technology company that a year ago began offering regional image exchanges for community banks based on an ASP model, says it is processing items at a rate of 10 million per month, with more growth in store in 2008. As smaller banks leave paper-check exchanges and begin …

Visa Inc., which is planning an initial public stock offering this year, processed 9.1 billion transactions in its fiscal 2008 first quarter ended Dec. 31, up 1.1 billion or 13% from 8 billion a year earlier, according to the quarterly report the No. 1 payment network filed Feb. 4 with …

Merchants like to gripe about the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) nearly as much as they like to complain about interchange, but a new set of questionnaires for merchants to use with their PCI assessments could reduce the irritation factor. The new, so-called Self Assessment Questionnaire from the PCI …

In a major vote of confidence for an 11-month-old form of electronic payment, Hy-Vee Inc., a 224-unit supermarket chain based in West Des Moines, Iowa, has installed back-office conversion (BOC) in 21 of its stores in the Des Moines area since last August and plans to roll out the system …

Three months after Wachovia Corp. began offering a mobile-banking service based on a software application installed in customers' handsets (Digital Transactions News, Nov. 13, 2007), the Charlotte, N.C.-based banking company is seeing new enrollments in the service rise at an average of 40% per week, while 10% of enrollments have …

Remote deposit capture still has plenty of territory to conquer in its original business-user market, but bank processor Fiserv Inc.'s CheckFree electronic bill-pay unit on Tuesday unveiled a home-based remote deposit capture service it believes will tap growing consumer demand for electronic banking. Dubbed Remote Deposit Capture for Consumers, the …

An absence of incentives?particularly for merchants?is handicapping contactless payments in the U.S., and by extension mobile payment at the point of sale could suffer, according to a new report. About 40,000 U.S. merchants now accept contactless cards and fobs, or 0.5% of all merchant locations. That number will grow to …

PayPal Inc.'s rapidly growing payment volume, coupled with its increasing penetration of markets not related to its mainline eBay Inc. business, led to the e-commerce processor's announcement this week that it had agreed to buy an Israeli technology firm, Fraud Sciences Ltd., for $169 million in cash. PayPal says the …

The weakening U.S. economy that's provoking angst in Washington and on Wall Street has yet to crimp No. 2 payment card network MasterCard Inc., which on Thursday reported strong fourth-quarter financials and transaction growth. MasterCard, however, is seeing a shift away from discretionary spending and toward so-called “everyday” purchases such …

Much ado is made about stopping phishing scams, database breaches, and related payment card fraud before it actually happens. But what about legitimate transactions that subsequently generate questionable or outright fraudulent chargebacks, leaving the merchant without revenue after having shipped the goods? A New York payments company called Chargeback File …

A test of contactless payment via mobile phones, launched this week in San Francisco, relies on near-field communication (NFC) technology not only to handle transactions but also to manage consumer rewards. It differs from past NFC pilots in the U.S. in another way: It doesn't rely on either the MasterCard …

While processors continue to struggle with the economics of micropayments, Javien Digital Payment Solutions Inc. may have found a way to make the tricky payments work. The McLean, Va.-based processor, which this week introduced a payments gateway to go along with a payment-processing platform it offers primarily to sellers of …

The already-delayed $7.8 billion buyout of Alliance Data Systems Corp. by private-equity firm The Blackstone Group may not be consummated, the Dallas-based payment processor disclosed on Monday. The news sent Alliance Data's shares down 34% and fueled speculation that the deal announced last May 17 would become the latest victim …

With its latest pilot for near-field communication (NFC) technology, which was announced on Monday and got under way last Thursday with select U.S. Bancorp credit card holders in Spokane, Wash., MasterCard Worldwide is testing a streamlined version of handset personalization it hopes will make it easier for consumers to adopt …

Newly independent of their founding bank owners, payment card processors Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) and Metavante Technologies Inc. weighed in this week with their fourth-quarter financials. The numbers by and large showed growth after a thicket of one-time spin-off and other expenses is cleared away, but both companies have …

Banks and processors looking for a way in to the potentially lucrative market for health-care payments could do worse than to cultivate that market for remote deposit capture, says an expert in electronic check processing. But while hospitals and clinics represent a wide-open opportunity for banks, it's not one that …