Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

First Data Corp., which spent much of last year integrating its massive acquisition of Concord EFS Inc., has picked up another potentially huge source of transaction volume by winning the processing business for the new Wal-Mart/Discover card announced last week. As a result of the agreement, the Denver-based transaction-processing giant …

North American Health Plans Inc., one of the country's largest third-party administrators of self-funded health-care plans, has begun using Visa- and MasterCard-branded debit cards from Evolution Benefits Inc., an Avon, Conn.-based processor. North American, Buffalo, N.Y., began Jan. 1 issuing Evolution Benefits' cards linked to flexible-spending accounts for its own …

For all the publicity phishing has received in the past year as a rapidly growing and particularly insidious form of electronic fraud, it figures as a source of information in identity-fraud cases only 1.7% of the time when the method behind the crime is known. Indeed, online channels as a …

American Express Co. made no pricing concessions to Walgreen's Co. to keep the pharmacy giant accepting AmEx cards, a top executive says. Responding to questions from securities analysts during a conference call yesterday to discuss AmEx's fourth-quarter and year-end 2004 results, Gary L. Crittenden, chief financial officer at the New …

Discover Financial Services Inc.'s deal with GE Consumer Finance Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will lead to a huge volume boost for Discover and help the Riverwoods, Ill.-based company offer pricing to potential issuing partners that exceeds the interchange income they can get from Visa and MasterCard, an expert observer …

ClearCommerce Corp.'s hopes to better its chances of winning business by becoming part of a publicly held company played a major role in its decision to merge with eFunds Corp., according to a senior executive at ClearCommerce. The Austin, Texas-based provider of transaction gateway and anti-fraud services to Internet merchants …

PayPal Inc. saw the volume of transactions it handled in the fourth quarter last year soar 46%, to 99.6 million, over the same period in 2003, while dollar volume climbed fully 51% to $5.6 billion, according to data released this week by the online transaction processor's parent company, eBay Inc. …

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co.'s decision to roll out a biometric payment system to all 85 stores in its chain was driven by both transaction-cost savings and customer interest, a senior executive for the Charleston, S.C.-based grocer says. In related news, Pay By Touch, the San Francisco-based company whose system Piggly …

E-commerce gateway Retail Decisions Inc. has announced enhancements to its anti-fraud technology that will, among other things, cut the number of transactions online retailers must refer for manual review by up to 30%. The Hazlet, N.J.-based operating unit of U.K.-based Retail Decisions PLC has integrated neural-networking technology called Prism and …

Two key results of First American Payment Systems L.P.'s acquisition of National Data Funding Corp.?consummated late last year and announced last week?are that First American gains an inhouse facility for wireless, Internet Protocol-based transaction processing while R. Scott Hatfield, one of NDFC's long-time owners, can now devote himself full-time to …

Pharmacy giant Walgreen's Co., which a month ago announced it would stop accepting American Express cards effective today, has reversed itself, announcing it will continue taking AmEx cards after reaching a new multi-year deal with the card company. Terms of the new arrangement were not released. “We were able to …

The automated clearing house system will account for more than one-fifth of all consumer bill payments by 2007, thanks to dramatic growth in the conversion of checks sent to billers' lockboxes into electronic ACH transactions, according to a new study from consulting firm TowerGroup, Needham, Mass. This conversion, known as …

PayPal Inc. has announced it will no longer allow sellers that have bank accounts registered with the San Jose, Calif.-based processor to block payments funded by credit cards, effective next month. Sellers' ability to refuse such payments has been part of the company's “Payment Receiving Preferences” policy for so-called premier …

Discover Financial Services Inc. and Pulse EFT Association announced today that Discover's $311-million acquisition of the Houston-based electronic funds transfer network, announced in November, has closed. The deal's completion follows approval of the merger by Pulse's member banks, and, according to Discover, more than doubles the company's U.S. card base …

eFunds Corp. today announced it is buying ClearCommerce Corp., an e-commerce transaction gateway specializing in online fraud detection and prevention, for $19.4 million in cash. The deal is expected to close by March 31. By acquiring Austin, Texas-based ClearCommerce, eFunds picks up anti-fraud products and expertise for the card-not-present market, …

VeriFone Inc. will continue to be controlled by GTCR Golder Rauner LLC, a Chicago-based private equity firm, and its current chief executive, Douglas Bergeron, will continue to be a major shareholder even after the San Jose, Calif.-based point of sale terminal maker completes its proposed initial public offering of stock. …

Half of online banking customers now receive fraudulent e-mails, known as phishes, and 78% say they are less inclined to respond to e-mails from the banks they do business with. That's according to a study released by New York-based security software company Cyota Inc. that illustrates how much worse the …

Washington Mutual Inc.'s decision to switch its 10.5-million-card debit portfolio to MasterCard International from Visa U.S.A., though a big win for MasterCard, doesn't necessarily herald a trend, observers say. At the same time, it throws into relief a bylaw Visa quietly put into place in 2003 that penalizes large debit-card-issuing …

Visa reports the holiday shopping season generated a 15.7% increase in dollar volume on its card products compared to the same time last year, with volume reaching $218.7 billion on all Visa-branded cards in the Nov. 1 to Jan. 2 period. Consumer spending on the company's debit cards grew 26.2%, …

Technical Transportation Inc. announces it has added ATM support to its delivery service for high-value, heavy machines. The 15-year-old company, based in Dallas, says it will now deliver, install, and test ATMs, bringing them from manufacturer to location and working through a network of agents and technicians. The company says …