E-Commerce

The government clamped down on Internet gambling on Friday with the Federal Bureau of Investigation seizing the domain names of the three leading Internet poker sites doing business in the U.S. and prosecutors announcing indictments against 11 defendants, including principals of the gambling sites and a Utah banker. The government …

Secure Vault Payments will announce a mobile application next month for the U.S. market, a top executive with the online-payments service tells Digital Transactions News. The mobile application, which will work on Apple, Android, and BlackBerry smart-phone systems, will start with a pilot in the fall and be in commercial …

American Express Co. on Monday launched Serve, a multifaceted online and offline payment system centered on a digital account and reloadable prepaid card that facilitate person-to-person payments as well as physical, online, and mobile purchases. AmEx says a key advantage of the digital account is that it is funding-agnostic, meaning …

It’s big news, not to mention a major embarrassment, when a leader in data security itself becomes a victim of a serious breach. That was the case for RSA, which stores the tokens widely used by financial institutions as a second factor of authentication for online-payment transactions. In the breach—announced …

Accertify Inc. this week announced a service aimed at automating most of the functions merchants must follow to contest a chargeback, regardless of the payment method used for the original transaction. The Accertify Chargeback Service has begun a beta test with two unnamed clients and will be commercially available by …

PayPal Inc.’s move into the physical point of sale is likely to involve handset-based services that make shopping and buying easier for consumers rather than a direct assault on the checkout counter, according to one expert who follows electronic payments. PayPal will most likely integrate its payments platform with applications …

Visa Inc. and electronic-commerce fraud-control and gateway services provider CyberSource Corp. on Monday introduced an enhanced risk-scoring service for online merchants, the first major jointly developed product from the two since Visa bought CyberSource last year. The service will augment CyberSource’s existing risk-assessment system by bringing in data from the …

The operator of the Secure Vault Payments network for online automated clearing house payments said it is creating a marketing council to promote awareness and usage of the new payment system. The council has the endorsement of ACH governing body NACHA, said Denver-based SVP operator eWise Systems USA Inc. Dean …

Facebook Inc., a massive social network with more than 500 million users worldwide that is said by some experts to have ambitions in the payments business, has established a wholly owned subsidiary called Facebook Payments Inc. Facebook incorporated the entity in Florida on Dec. 10 and is advertising now for …

Merchants and other proponents of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment, which will regulate debit card interchange rates starting this summer, argue that the law will benefit consumers by allowing retailers to pass on lower transaction costs to their customers. While banks and other critics say this is unlikely, an alternative-payments …