Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
A small software company that has sued big banks and processors for years over patents it holds that relate to check-imaging and image exchange scored a series of victories in recent weeks as three banks settled with the company and agreed to license its technology. A settlement between Bank of …
Read More »Viewpointe Picks up Image Settlement with Its PaymentsNation Deal
Viewpointe Archive Services LLC, operator of both an electronic check-image archive as well as an image-exchange network, on Monday announced it is entering the business of check-image settlement with the acquisition of PaymentsNation, a Dallas-based company that until recently was known as National Clearing House. The deal, for which terms …
Read More »BOC Will Remain a Minor League E-Check, Expert Says
In the 18 months since NACHA introduced an electronic payment method that lets merchants convert bundles of checks in a central location, it's become clear that the method?known as back-office conversion (BOC)?isn't likely to have a big impact on retailers' paper-check volumes. That's according to Bob Meara, a senior analyst …
Read More »AT&T Aims to Ring up Savings with e-Bills Via CheckFree Banks
Hoping to cut its paper-bill costs, AT&T Inc. has quietly made electronic bill payment available to its AT&T Mobility mobile-device customers that have deposit accounts with the more than 3,000 financial institutions that use the e-bill services of bank processor Fiserv Inc.'s CheckFree subsidiary. AT&T Mobility, formerly Cingular Wireless, and …
Read More »Eye on Earnings: Heartland Payment Systems, TNS, FIS
The softening economy so far hasn't taken a big bite out of payment processors' earnings, but it is having some effects. Meanwhile, processors continue to streamline their operations, integrate acquisitions, and roll out new services. ? Reflecting the recent weakness in consumer spending, big merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc. …
Read More »NACHA Moves Back IAT Deadline to Allow More Time for Testing
NACHA, which late last week extended by six months the deadline for banks to start processing a new automated clearing house transaction type representing payments flowing into and out of the U.S., says it decided to grant the extension so that financial institutions and their vendors will have more time …
Read More »Doldrums Over, Summer Winds Fill Sails of Alternative Payments
This article begins a six-part series by industry analyst Steve Mott that examines the growing economic tensions and structural conflicts that are drawing the acquiring side of the card processing business into a sustained battle with card issuers. Five Digital Transactions News installments assess the divergent impacts of this conflict …
Read More »POP’s Still on a Roll a Year After BOC’s Debut
Some observers speculated that the point-of-purchase, or POP, electronic-check code would go “pop” after the supposedly more merchant- and consumer-friendly back-office conversion (BOC) code debuted in March 2007, but the latest automated clearing house volume numbers show otherwise. POP posted 115.3 million transactions in the first quarter, up 48.7% from …
Read More »Electronic Bill Pay Gains At Paper’s Expense, But Growth Is Slowing
The share of bills consumers pay the old-fashioned way via the regular mail continues to decline, according to the U.S. Postal Service's most recent annual study about what goes through the mails. But despite the gains of electronic bill payments, the availability of free bill-pay service at most banks may …
Read More »Viewpointe Adds to Momentum Behind Web Links for Image Exchange
Seeking to solve what the electronic-payments business calls the “last-mile” problem in image exchange, Viewpointe Archive Services LLC on Tuesday launched technology that allows small banks to link via the Internet to its Pointe2Pointe image-exchange network. In this way, banks can rely on existing Internet connections to use the network, …
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