MasterCard prepaid cards received new utility this week when MasterCard Worldwide launched a network of retailers, dubbed MasterCard rePower, at whose locations cardholders can use cash to add value to MasterCard- and Maestro-branded prepaid cards. The first rePower reload transaction took place Monday at a Village Pantry convenience store in …

Checks cleared by paying banks as electronic images outnumbered substitute checks for the first time in the short history of image exchange in October, according to numbers compiled by the Electronic Check Clearing House Organization, Dallas. The ECCHO statistics, gathered from three primary settlement networks, also show healthy growth in …

Less than a year ago, the only publicly traded payment card network stock was that of American Express Co. With Tuesday's announcement by investment-banking giant Morgan Stanley that it will spin off its Discover Financial Services LLC unit, the No. 4 network, there could be four. MasterCard Inc.'s May initial …

The latest U.S. trial of contactless payment involving mobile phones and near-field communication technology (NFC), set to begin Jan. 10 in New York City, will combine key elements of the two other U.S. pilots mounted so far, and represents the first in which users can access credit cards issued by …

Mutual need brought Electronic Clearing House Inc. (ECHO) and Intuit Inc. together in the $142 million deal, announced last week, that will make Camarillo, Calif-based processor ECHO part of Intuit, Mountain View, Calif., some time in the first quarter (Digital Transactions News, Dec. 15). Intuit, marketer of the popular QuickBooks …

Intuit Inc. has notched yet another acquisition calculated to augment its widely used accounting software with electronic-payments capability by agreeing to pay $142 million in cash to buy Electronic Clearing House Inc. (ECHO), a publicly held, Camarillo, Calif.-based processor of card and automated clearing house transactions. The deal, which is …

PayPal Inc., the online payment service of online auction firm eBay Inc., has signed another big company in its quest to expand beyond eBay users, and the processor says more such clients are coming next year. This week, Monster, the leading online job-search and recruitment service, said it has begun …

Online payments processor ClickandBuy this week announced what it calls “Version 2.0” of its digital-content platform, which includes an electronic wallet, long-awaited billing through two major U.S. phone companies, lower merchant pricing, and a new name, to boot. Parent company Firstgate Internet AG of Zug, Switzerland, has chucked the ampersand …

A new tactic used by Internet fraudsters is causing a dramatic upsurge in the number of Web sites hosting phishing attacks. The number of fake sites phishing fraudsters use to con Internet users into giving up PINs, passwords, and other confidential information soared to 37,444 in October, up nearly nine-fold …

Hoping to push up compliance with its data-security rules, Visa USA on Tuesday announced first-ever incentives?including cash payments–to go along with new penalties for acquiring banks that serve the 1,200 largest Visa-accepting merchants. The carrot-and-stick package, intended to get acquirers to bring more merchants into compliance with the Payment Card …