Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
The market for decoupled debit cards, which has been eerily silent for about a year, may soon be making waves again. An executive with Tempo Payments Inc., a non-bank processor with the only network-branded product on the market currently, said this week the company plans to launch a new product …
Read More »Fraudsters Beef up Attacks on Checks As the ‘Weakest Link’
Check volumes may be declining, but check-related crime remains by far the most common type of payment fraud reported by corporate financial officers. What's more, while overall losses still remain small, fraud attempts increased last year and the recession could be a cause, according to the Association for Financial Professionals. …
Read More »Why the Fed Is Moving to Same-Day Clearing for E-Checks
Looking to speed up clearing time for electronic checks on the automated clearing house, The Federal Reserve Banks on Monday announced the first change to the settlement windows for the ACH network in 35 years. The change, which is set to take effect in the second quarter of next year, …
Read More »Online Spending Sags, But Not As Much as Overall Retail Sales
It's no surprise, but it's still significant: retail electronic-commerce sales declined by more than 5% in the fourth quarter, the U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported this week. “This is the first-ever quarterly decline year over year,” a Census Bureau spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News. The bureau began tracking e-commerce …
Read More »ACH Bill Payments Shine As Other E-Checks Dim with Check Decline
Internet bill payments were the star performers among the established electronic-check payment options during the fourth quarter, according to figures released Wednesday by the governing body of the automated clearing house. NACHA reports that transaction volume on its WEB e-check code, the code for online transactions such as bill payments, …
Read More »Amazon Launches Flexible Payments As a Commercial Service
Eighteen months after introducing it to developers as a beta project (Digital Transactions News, Aug. 6, 2007), Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday commercially launched its Flexible Payments Service (FPS) as the latest entry in an increasingly crowded field of alternative-payment engines that includes industry giants PayPal Inc. and Google Inc. The …
Read More »NACHA Group Close to Proposals for Mobile Payments on the ACH
A group that has been investigating possible rules changes for the automated clearing house network to account for mobile payments plans to present its proposals by the end of March, according to a senior executive at NACHA, the organization that regulates the ACH. The Mobile Banking Work Group, a NACHA-sponsored …
Read More »The Challenge Confronting PayPal, Google, And Amazon
This is the third installment of a six-part series on how Web 2.0 developments are likely to transform the payments business. The online marketplace is morphing to payments embedded in top-line oriented-marketing services, and integrated infrastructure where small retailers can share the scale and cost savings of bigger players. Both …
Read More »Schools And State Agencies Eye NACHA’s Online Payment System
Secure Vault Payments, the online payment system that NACHA has been piloting since last spring, is catching on as a bill-payment alternative among colleges and state agencies, says Kendall Myles, the executive who is heading up SVP merchant recruitment for NACHA, the regulatory body for the automated clearing house network. …
Read More »A New LML Patent Could Bring It a Bonanza in E-Check Fees
A Canadian transaction processor has begun enforcing a recently reissued U.S patent whose long list of claims could potentially allow it to control several of the most popular electronic-check applications on the automated clearing house network. Indeed, if LML Payment Systems Inc. succeeds with an infringement suit it brought last …
Read More »