The Federal Reserve Board of Governors expects the volume of checks the Fed processes to drop 15% this year, a sharp acceleration in the long-term decline in check volume that the central bank attributes to continuing movement by consumers and businesses to electronic transaction channels. The drop would send Fed …

Mother's Day-related spending on jewelry and chocolates on the Internet drove a 24% increase in e-commerce volume for VeriSign Inc., to $4.4 billion, the Mountain View, Calif.-based transaction gateway for online merchants said today. Transaction volume for the company during the period measured, April 25 through May 8, jumped by …

Credit Union 24, the largest electronic funds transfer network in the nation owned by credit unions, said today it had seen transaction volume soar by a record 35% last year, to 140.9 million from 104.7 million in 2003. The network, based in Tallahassee, Fla., credits new members and an expanded …

With card interchange rates becoming a subject that even central bankers are beginning to ponder, a long-time analyst of the electronic-transaction market has released a report arguing that overall acceptance costs are often more favorable to merchants in the U.S. than overseas and that merchants would be better off developing …

Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization iPayment Inc. today reported its revenues and processed charge volume more than doubled in the first quarter compared to the year-ago period, with much of the growth driven by a December acquisition of a merchant portfolio from First Data Merchant Services. In a conference call …

Ritz Camera Centers Inc., which last week announced it would adopt MasterCard's PayPass contactless card program chainwide, says it hopes to use the technology to hasten photo-finishing customers through the checkout process. “They're in the stores two or three time a week, and they want the service to be kind …

After a slowdown in February, the number of Web sites engaged in phishing frauds increased at a faster clip in March, reaching 2,870, according to data released by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an organization of software firms, payment companies, and law-enforcement agencies that tracks the online fraud. The 6.9% increase …

A Washington, D.C.-based organization formed early this year by retail-industry trade groups says it is beginning to work out a plan of attack that it hopes will lead to regulation of the fees card-accepting merchants pay issuing banks. After years of friction between banks and merchants over the subject, this …

A proposed method by which retailers could take checks they accept at the point of sale and convert them in a back office into electronic transactions on the automated clearing house could hinder an encouraging trend among consumers away from writing checks and toward electronic transaction channels, such as credit …

Transaction gateway Shift4 Corp. reports it processed $1.1 billion on more than 13 million transactions in March, marking the first time the company has exceeded the $1 billion level in a month. Las Vegas-based Shift4, which specializes in connecting hospitality merchants and entertainment venues to back-end processors via high-speed Internet …