Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Online-transaction processor PayPal Inc. processed 110.4 million transactions in the first quarter worth $6.23 billion, up 39% and 44% respectively over the year-ago period, according to figures released today by San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc., the company's parent. Of this transaction volume, some 71% came from auction activity, principally on …

DSW Shoe Warehouse's disclosure yesterday that the theft of card data at its stores, originally revealed last month, affected some 1.4 million accounts follows by a week the news that card data stored by New York-based merchant Polo Ralph Lauren had been compromised and casts the spotlight on an industry-backed …

Sensing a trend within banks toward pulling together credit, debit, checking, and other electronic payments-processing operations, IBM Corp. is getting ready to push an all-purpose retail payments engine for both bank back offices and third-party transaction processors. “It's a payments hub, and it's cheaper, faster, and easier to maintain,” than …

A project undertaken by the nation's largest banks to trade digital check images and substitute checks is trafficking 60,000 image files per night eight months after the first two banks hooked up to the network. SVPCO, a unit of The Clearing House, a New York-based payments processor, says volume has …

Merchant transactions processed by First Data Corp. grew 38% to 5.28 billion in the quarter ended March 31, sending acquiring processing fees up 19% to $682.7 million?or almost 13 cents per transaction–at the Denver-based processor, according to first-quarter figures released today together with comparisons to the year-ago period. Merchant transactions …

Online merchants are interested in alternatives to credit cards for payment, but set high hurdles for alternative payment methods to overcome, including the need for authentication, for a smooth, uninterrupted customer session, and for reasonable pricing from processors that doesn't tax merchants to develop a user base for the processors. …

An operational test of a system by which consumers could instruct their banks to pay online merchants and billers is set to take place in July, according to NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rule-setting association for the automated clearing house that is sponsoring the test. Participants so far include Radio Shack …

The process of converting paper checks consumers send to billers into electronic transactions is driving much of the growth of the automated clearing house, according to ACH statistics for 2004 released today. Accounts-receivable conversion, or ARC, transactions increased by more than 1 billion last year, accounting for 54% of the …

Minneapolis-based remittance processor MoneyGram International Inc. is acquiring ACH Commerce LLC, a processor of automated clearing house transactions, in a deal expected to close by June 30. Terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but ACH Commerce will remain based in Ooltewah, Tenn., where it was founded five years …

Mer-Tec Inc., an online transaction processor based in Lewisville, Texas, will switch on a micropayments service next week for handling online payments and rights management for digital content, with an emphasis on song and video downloads. The service, which Mer-Tec calls SecureCastle, will open with about 10 independent artists as …

PayPal Inc.'s experience with processing payments for music downloads is encouraging the San Jose, Calif.-based processor to begin investigating other micropayments markets, including downloadable games, electronic greeting cards, and news media. “The success of PayPal adoption for the music vertical has inspired us to look at other verticals,” says Peter …

Burger King Corp., the Miami-based fast-food giant, may be rolling out credit and signature-debit card acceptance chainwide, but don't look for its stores to accept PIN-based debit cards on a wide scale any time soon. Julian Gomez, director of operations, services, and programs for Burger King, says his chain is …

A spin-off of Discover Financial Services Inc. by its parent, Morgan Stanley, won't likely change the card network's strategy, but an acquisition of the newly independent company would likely occur soon after the spin-off, leading to probable changes in direction at the 20-year-old card company, including a possible break-up, according …

In a vote of confidence for smart card technology in North America, a leading producer of chip-embedded plastic cards has achieved full production of the technologies necessary for smart cards at a plant outside Baltimore. Axalto Holding NV, a France-based card manufacturer, says this is the first time such full-scale …

With hackers, phishers, and other criminals undermining the trust all transaction networks depend on for their survival, some experts say the time has come to fight back. In the following excerpt from “The Myth of Invincible Encryption,” an article that will appear in the May-June 2005 issue of Digital Transactions …

With credit card fees having become one of their biggest operating expenses, airlines are turning to alternative, lower-cost payment options. The aim is to reduce the collective $1.5 billion in card-acceptance costs airlines pay annually, according to a recent study by Edgar, Dunn & Co. Houston-based Continental Airlines has moved …

A Manhattan-based startup company is bringing the concept of check guarantee to the business of processing card-not-present payments. Precharge Risk Management Solutions, founded less than two years ago, has only in the past few months been actively marketing its service but has already signed up more than 1,000 online merchants, …

With transaction-data security a top-of-mind concern these days in the wake of such breaches as the ChoicePoint case and the theft of card data from the DSW Shoe Warehouse chain, executives for two leading security-audit firms say their merger couldn't have come at a more propitious time. Chicago-based Ambiron LLC …

After a year of trying to sell itself as a transaction gateway for brick-and-mortar merchants, Authorize.Net Corp. says it has learned one important lesson: when it comes to the point of sale, any Internet-enabled device is capable of being a POS terminal. As a result, the American Fork, Utah-based processor, …

E-commerce fraud is beginning to make itself felt in the markets for voice-over-IP (VoIP) services and in digital-content downloads, both of which are high-potential markets that many processors are counting on for transaction growth, according to Retail Decisions Inc., the U.S. unit of Retail Decisions PLC, a provider of online …