Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

CyberSource Corp. says it has introduced a so-called PIN-less debit card payment option for online transactions at the urging of merchants looking for ways to cut their transaction costs. The Mountain View, Calif.-based payments gateway for e-commerce merchants claims to be the only major vendor offering the service, which would …

E*Trade Financial Corp. today announced it agreed to sell its ATM network to Cardtronics Inc., an ATM deployer based in Houston, for $106 million in cash. E*Trade, a New York-based online banking and brokerage company, operates a network of 15,000 ATMs in an operating unit called E*Trade Access Inc. The …

Brother International Corp., Bridgewater, N.J., a maker of office equipment such as computer printers and fax machines, has announced it is marketing a wireless device for use by mobile merchants and salespeople looking to be able to process credit card transactions in the field. The device, a Samsung SPH-i700 Pocket …

The stunning success of such ventures as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music service, coupled with a huge, untapped potential in transactions, has many expert observers becoming more and more optimistic about the prospects for micropayment processing. That may bode well for recent startups such as BitPass Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., …

Woodside, Calif.-based PassMark Security LLC, which incorporated only in February to attack phishing and other online transaction fraud, says it has attracted interest in its solution from banking and retailer Web sites. The company is now in serious discussions with “eight to ten major sites,” says Bill Harris, chief executive, …

Pay By Touch, a San Francisco-based company that has been marketing a point-of-sale payment system that relies on fingerprint scans rather than cards or other devices to authenticate transactions, scored a sweeping victory today in litigation over the central patents to its technology. Judge Maxine Chesney of the U.S. District …

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. is investigating a network glitch that caused “duplicate postings” Tuesday of debit card transactions secured by personal identification numbers at its stores, according to company representatives. The Jacksonville, Fla.-based supermarket chain, which operates 1,070 stores across 12 states in the Southeast, says the problem occurred from late …

TNS Inc. has acquired the primary asset of U.S. Wireless Data Inc., which in March filed for bankruptcy protection. Reston, Va.-based TNS, formerly Transaction Network Services, says its acquisition of New York-based U.S. Wireless Data's Synapse point-of-sale processing system strengthens the company's efforts to build its business in emerging transaction …

Vendors in the ATM industry are beginning to move ahead with systems that would allow machine owners to remotely install and manage encryption keys mandated by a new security standard set by the bank card networks. The introduction of solutions for remote administration of Triple DES keys comes even as …

Demand from corporate clients?combined with a deadline that's only five months away–is a major factor pushing banks into check imaging, according to a top executive with one major supplier of check-processing software. Although many banks are poised to begin accepting so-called image replacement documents when the Check Clearing for the …

The criminal activity known as phishing soared to new heights last month, according to statistics released today by the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The consortium of Internet companies and law-enforcement agencies reported that the number of unique phishing incidents recorded by the group rose 180% to 1,125 in April, more than …

Deploring the extent to which banks have turned over key functions in consumer payments to non-bank companies, a leading figure in the payments industry on Thursday called on banks to “seize back” leadership in the industry. In a keynote address delivered at the Bank Administration Institute's TransPay trade show in …

Viewpointe Archive Services LLC announced this week it will begin sharing check images among banks participating in its image-exchange in September. The company has worked out a tentative pricing schedule and is working on systems to perform such value-added functions as checking image quality and translating images from one bank's …

With rising transaction costs leading many retailers to look at the automated clearing house as a less expensive form of electronic payment, at least one leading bank executive is publicly throwing cold water on the concept of proprietary retail debit cards based on the ACH. Jonathan Wilk, senior vice president …

Fiserv Inc. expects to do a major business in the new substitute check instrument that has been created by the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21)?so much so that it is entering into agreements with a software company and an air carrier to deliver and process potentially …

PayPal may be getting close to processing payments for online song downloads, but it's not likely to be moving more broadly into micropayments any time soon. The San Jose, Calif.-based payment-processing unit of online auctioneer eBay Inc. finished adding functionality to its system last month to handle song payments and …

Metavante Corp., which today announced it is paying $610 million in cash to buy the NYCE electronic funds transfer network from First Data Corp. and its bank owners, sees the deal as part of a nearly $1 billion payments strategy that has led the Milwaukee-based processor to snap up other …

A payment system based on toll-road transponders in Dallas will expand later this year beyond the five McDonald's restaurants that have been part of the radio-frequency identification (RFID) pilot since its inception two years ago. Hummelstown, Pa.-based TransCore, which installs RFID-based toll-road systems around the world, says it will add …

Recent industry statistics paint a grim picture of how pervasive spam, and with it e-mail fraud, is becoming in the U.S. transaction economy. Brightmail Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of anti-spam software, reports that the volume of spam hit 64% of some 96 billion e-mail messages its systems filtered in …

Digency Inc. is within a month of signing its first clients for tests of a new system it has developed that fights e-commerce fraud by pinpointing Web users' geographic location, according to Ed R. Starrs, chief executive of the El Dorado Hills, Calif.-based e-commerce processor. Dubbed “Geocate,” the product has …