Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
In a bid to make purchasing its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates more efficient for networks, VeriSign Inc. today said it will begin offering three-year certificates next month. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said the new, longer-term certificates will save customers as much as 24% from the cost of currently …
Read More »The 41st Parameter Fights Online Fraud with Not-So-Obvious Data
The need among online merchants and banks to harden their Web sites against phishing, pharming, and other attacks only rises by the month, and that's helping to drive business for startup companies like The 41st Parameter Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz. The company, formed last year, takes its name from its belief …
Read More »A Trade Group for ATM Servicers Asks for Diebold Injunction
The Financial & Security Products Association, Albuquerque, N.M., has filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against Diebold Inc. as part of an antitrust suit the 307-member trade group filed in October against the North Canton, Ohio-based ATM manufacturer. The motion asks Judge William H. Alsup of the U.S. District …
Read More »NACHA at Work on Blueprint for Back-Office E-Checks for Merchants
NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based organization that establishes rules for automated clearing house transactions, is working on a business case for a new payment type that would allow merchants to collect all consumer checks they receive and convert them into electronic funds transfers in a back room or other central location. …
Read More »Union Bank, National City Latest to Link to SVPCO’s Image Exchange
SVPCO, which began operating a national image-exchange network late last summer, today brought two more banks live on its system, bringing to nine the number of institutions and processors linking to the network. National City Bank, Cleveland, and San Francisco-based Union Bank of California are now trading check images through …
Read More »PayPal Posts a 39% Boost in First-Quarter Transactions
Online-transaction processor PayPal Inc. processed 110.4 million transactions in the first quarter worth $6.23 billion, up 39% and 44% respectively over the year-ago period, according to figures released today by San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc., the company's parent. Of this transaction volume, some 71% came from auction activity, principally on …
Read More »Merchant Breaches Cast Light on Deadlines for Card-Security Compliance
DSW Shoe Warehouse's disclosure yesterday that the theft of card data at its stores, originally revealed last month, affected some 1.4 million accounts follows by a week the news that card data stored by New York-based merchant Polo Ralph Lauren had been compromised and casts the spotlight on an industry-backed …
Read More »IBM To Begin a Push for a Central Hub to Combine Transaction Types
Sensing a trend within banks toward pulling together credit, debit, checking, and other electronic payments-processing operations, IBM Corp. is getting ready to push an all-purpose retail payments engine for both bank back offices and third-party transaction processors. “It's a payments hub, and it's cheaper, faster, and easier to maintain,” than …
Read More »SVPCO’s Image Exchange Volume Builds Slowly But with Big Items
A project undertaken by the nation's largest banks to trade digital check images and substitute checks is trafficking 60,000 image files per night eight months after the first two banks hooked up to the network. SVPCO, a unit of The Clearing House, a New York-based payments processor, says volume has …
Read More »Acquiring Revenue Climbs at First Data on Steady Transaction Growth
Merchant transactions processed by First Data Corp. grew 38% to 5.28 billion in the quarter ended March 31, sending acquiring processing fees up 19% to $682.7 million?or almost 13 cents per transaction–at the Denver-based processor, according to first-quarter figures released today together with comparisons to the year-ago period. Merchant transactions …
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