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Bank technology provider Jack Henry & Associates Inc. on Monday said it would buy Goldleaf Financial Solutions Inc. in a $19.1 million cash deal that will bring two of the leading deployers of remote deposit capture services under one roof. The pending acquisition will be Monett, Mo.-based Jack Henry's 17th …
Read More »Network Rivalry Sparks 10-Year Quadrupling of PIN-Debit Pricing
Merchants increasingly are complaining about the rising cost of accepting PIN-debit transactions, once by far the cheapest payment they could process from any piece of plastic. Now, data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City show why: the cost of accepting PIN-debit cards rose 305% between 1996 and …
Read More »How the Recession Could Push up Fees for Expedited Bill Payments
The severity and length of the recession makes it likely banks will be able to raise fees for last-minute online bill payments, recent research says. That will mean more revenue for financial institutions that have been seeking ways to make money from electronic bill payments, a service they've generally been …
Read More »Big Merchants Push RBS WorldPay into End-to-End Encryption
The end-to-end encryption train picked up steam on Tuesday when big merchant acquirer RBS WorldPay Inc. said it would use point-of-sale terminal developer VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s VeriShield Protect technology. The announcement is significant because RBS WorldPay is the first acquirer to publicly disclose it is using the system VeriFone unveiled …
Read More »Single-Branch USAA Looks to iPhone App to Capture More Deposits
USAA, one of the pioneers of remote deposit capture, leaped to the technological frontiers again on Tuesday with the addition of remote deposit capture capabilities to its three-month-old mobile-banking application for Apple Inc.'s iPhone. The new feature enables customers to snap a picture of a check's front and back, and …
Read More »Survey: PCI Awareness Is up Among Small Fry, But So Is PCI Confusion
Despite widespread efforts to educate small merchants about the Payment Card Industry data-security standards (PCI DSS), a large majority still don't understand fully the complex requirements, according to a study released today by the National Retail Federation, ControlScan and the PCI Knowledge Base. The survey of 220 so-called Level 4 …
Read More »Kemesa Looks to Banks to Help Sell Its New Online Security Tool
Kemesa LLC entered the war on online fraud on Monday with a product that allows consumers to pay e-commerce merchants using so-called anonymous data that would be useless to cyber thieves. The Aventura, Fla.-based startup says it plans to market the product to consumers through their financial institutions and is …
Read More »Seeking Easier Prey, Fraudsters Attack Call Centers to Loot Accounts
Faced with more stringent authentication procedures for online financial transactions, criminals are turning to call centers to commit fraud via the phone channel, according to RSA, the Security Division of EMC. Although call-center fraud still is a small percentage of total Internet fraud, it is “definitely growing,” says Joram Borenstein, …
Read More »Zong’s Growth Heats up Rivalry in Mobile Payments for Downloads
If mobile-payments services are finding a niche anywhere right now, it appears to be in the market for digital goods like games and social-network applications. Palo Alto, Calf.-based Zong Inc., which began operations last year, announced this week that the processing platform it shares with its parent company, Echovox Inc., …
Read More »For the First Time, Banks Edge Billers in Race for Bill-Pay Traffic
For years, more consumers have used biller sites rather than online-banking sites to pay their bills electronically. But now, with financial institutions struggling to build deposits, bank sites have edged ahead, according to research released on Wednesday by Javelin Strategy & Research. At the same time, though, it appears some …
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