NACHA, which late last week extended by six months the deadline for banks to start processing a new automated clearing house transaction type representing payments flowing into and out of the U.S., says it decided to grant the extension so that financial institutions and their vendors will have more time …

A revenue-generating proposal that would force merchant acquirers to report their clients' card-based sales to the Internal Revenue Service was signed into law Wednesday by President Bush. The provision, which critics say will impose a costly burden on the entire acquiring business at a time when the industry is under …

U.S. credit card transaction and dollar-volume growth once again played second fiddle to debit, according to the latest financial reports from MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. And U.S. debit and still-strong international growth kept the networks' operating earnings in the black during their quarters ended June 30, although a one-time …

Amazon.com Inc., the nation's largest Internet retailer, became a larger force in the online-payments market on Tuesday when it unveiled two services that give merchants and consumers more alternatives to eBay Inc.'s PayPal and Google Inc.'s Google Checkout, not to mention the general-purpose credit cards. Both services, dubbed Checkout by …

This article begins a six-part series by industry analyst Steve Mott that examines the growing economic tensions and structural conflicts that are drawing the acquiring side of the card processing business into a sustained battle with card issuers. Five Digital Transactions News installments assess the divergent impacts of this conflict …

Mobile-payments processor Obopay Inc., which is increasing its fee to send money to 25 cents from 10 cents effective Aug. 7, says it has not had complaints from users despite the more than doubling in the transaction price. “We're pleased we got it right,” says Gregory Holmes, president of Obopay …

A significant minority of financial institutions may not be ready to implement a new application for international automated clearing house payments by next March, even though that's when all banks will have to start supporting it, according to research published this week. The new application, known as International ACH Transactions, …

Some observers speculated that the point-of-purchase, or POP, electronic-check code would go “pop” after the supposedly more merchant- and consumer-friendly back-office conversion (BOC) code debuted in March 2007, but the latest automated clearing house volume numbers show otherwise. POP posted 115.3 million transactions in the first quarter, up 48.7% from …

Innovative Card Technologies Inc., a 15-year-old maker of high-tech bank cards, expects to have pilots under way with U.S. financial institutions by the end of September for its primary product, a credit-card-sized device that generates a one-time pass code for online transactions. Steven R. Delcarson, chief executive of the Los …

Lending took a bit out of travel-and-entertainment card leader American Express Co.'s second-quarter profits, but discount revenue still grew. Meanwhile, Fifth Third Processing Solutions outperformed its struggling parent company, and USA Technologies Inc. reported that transactions on its network of unattended machines more than doubled while sales of contactless card-reading …