Visa's decision to increase its interchange rates for PIN debit transactions on its Interlink network may generate more revenue for the network's issuers but will also create more interest in competing non-bank networks catering to merchants, according to some observers. Visa yesterday released a four-page document to member banks outlining …

Just ahead of the holiday shopping season, VeriSign Inc. has introduced a new mark that e-commerce sites can display to reassure shoppers about the security of their payments. The VeriSign Secured Seal denotes that a Web site uses Secure Sockets Layer encryption and other technologies?including the company's gateways–to guard customer …

Purchase volume on MasterCard International credit and signature-based debit cards in the U.S. grew almost 8% in the third quarter, to $132.9 billion, the bank card company reported today. MasterCard credit cards registered growth of 6.9%, to $109.7 billion, well below worldwide growth of 11.2%. On the signature debit side, …

The automated clearing house is handling more electronic transactions than ever, though growth in its electronic check category is showing signs of cooling off. The National Automated Clearing House Association reports the ACH network interchanged almost 2.1 billion transactions among financial institutions overall in the third quarter, the first time …

With the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21) taking effect today, Metavante Corp. hopes to use its latest acquisition in the payments business to help it leverage sales to banks for distributed check capture and move the two national check image exchanges that have gone live so …

Yahoo Finance's decision to shutter its 4-year-old PayDirect person-to-person payment service means it is also discontinuing a service it started up only 10 months ago to allow electronic remittances from domestic users to recipients overseas. The new international payment service was an effort by Yahoo Finance, a unit of Sunnyvale, …

In an effort to make amends to sellers that were affected by its recent service outage, PayPal Inc. will credit all seller transaction fees incurred between 12 a.m. and midnight Pacific time tomorrow. Accounts eligible to receive the credits, which PayPal will distribute by Nov. 25, are premier and business …

Northwest Airlines Inc. is enjoying a breakthrough year in electronic ticket sales. The St. Paul, Minn.-based air carrier, the fifth largest in the world, is booking between $4 million and $6 million a day in ticket sales through its Web site, twice the volume the airline's site accounted for a …

TransFirst, a Dallas-based processor that has grown significantly through acquisition over the past two years, has appointed two new executives to run its divisions concerned with independent sales organizations, agents, and resellers. Ryan O'Connor, formerly with Nova Information Systems, a unit of U.S. Bank, has become president of TransFirst's ISA …

PayPal Inc. may have made headlines last week with its intermittent outages, but third-quarter numbers released this week by its parent company, Internet auction kingpin eBay Inc., show the online payments processor racking up significant growth in accounts, transactions, and dollar volume, while continuing to chop fraud losses. San Jose, …