Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
PayPal Inc. on Tuesday will make available to its entire account base a so-called virtual debit card it has been testing with a large number of account holders for nearly 18 months. The new product, which PayPal has dubbed Plug-In, carries a MasterCard Worldwide brand and allows users to buy …
Read More »E-Commerce Fraud Rate Holds Steady, But Fraud-Control Costs Go Up
Online fraud rates are holding steady but the cost of fraud is going up as e-commerce grows and companies hire more people to weed out suspect orders, according to CyberSource Corp.'s 9th annual e-commerce fraud survey. The merchant processor and risk-management firm's recent survey of 318 American and Canadian retailers …
Read More »BSG Extends Its Bill-to-Phone Service to Mobile Commerce
BSG Clearing Solutions has started talking to sellers of digital merchandise about using a new service that would allow them to take payment for games, songs, and other such goods by charging the items to consumers' wireless bills. The targeted sellers for the new service are so-called off-deck merchants, or …
Read More »Phishing Takes a Break As Attacks, Hosting Sites Slip in July
The crime of phishing entered midsummer doldrums, offering some relief to financial institutions, merchants, and other organizations engaged in e-commerce, according to the latest report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The number of unique e-mail attacks dropped 17%, to 23,917, in July, while the population of sites launching attacks dipped …
Read More »By Arming Consumers, a Startup Hopes to Cut Down on ID Fraud
In a sign of how the problem of identity fraud is spawning new businesses, a La Jolla, Calif.-based startup announced on Tuesday a free service allowing consumers to determine which pieces of junk mail they want to stop receiving. Once consumers use ProQuo Inc.'s Web site to indicate their preferences?which …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: Google Checkout Adds More Merchants
Google Inc. gave a progress report about its Google Checkout payment services launched in mid-2006 and processors and banks heavily involved in the payments business reported third-quarter earnings last week. ? Search-engine leader Google's Google Checkout online payment service added PetSmart, Drugstore.com, Shoebuy.com, and the NHL Store as merchants in …
Read More »PayPal’s Strategy Bears Fruit As off-eBay Ratio Steadily Rises
PayPal Inc.'s efforts to lessen its dependence on transaction traffic supplied by the online auctions run by parent eBay Inc. are paying off. Some 44% of the $12.2 billion the San Jose, Calif.-based e-commerce processor handled in the third quarter came from off-eBay merchants, according to statistics filed by eBay …
Read More »Startup TrialPay Lets Online Merchants Make Sales out of No Sales
A Silicon Valley startup that allows online buyers to receive products free if they buy something from other vendors has signed up 1,400 merchants and expects to have 10,000 on its roster within a year. “We enable multimerchant commerce,” says Alex Rampell, founder and chief executive of TrialPay Inc., which …
Read More »Eyeing the Point of Sale, Bill Me Later Readies Test for Core Service
Bill Me Later Inc. will work with two to three merchants starting next month to test an extension of its online, credit-based payments service to the physical point of sale. If the test yields good results, the Timonium, Md.-based processor will likely launch a commercial service by the middle of …
Read More »Online, Other Factors Beat Costs in Driving Alternative Payments
For all the publicity surrounding merchant dissatisfaction with payment-acceptance costs, the issue doesn't rank high with online retailers looking into alternatives to bank-issued credit and debit cards, a payment-industry researcher says. E-commerce merchants are adopting, or investigating, such payment providers as PayPal Inc. and Bill Me Later Inc. hoping most …
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