News

May, 2004

• 19 May

  A BofA Banker Argues Against ACH-Based Debit Programs

  With rising transaction costs leading many retailers to look at the automated clearing house as a less expensive form of electronic payment, at least one leading bank executive is publicly throwing cold water on the concept of proprietary retail debit cards based on the ACH. Jonathan Wilk, senior vice president …
• 19 May

  Fiserv Looks to Exploit Opportunities in Substitute Checks

  Fiserv Inc. expects to do a major business in the new substitute check instrument that has been created by the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21)?so much so that it is entering into agreements with a software company and an air carrier to deliver and process potentially …
• 19 May

  PayPal: Yes to Online Songs, Not Sure About Micropayments

  PayPal may be getting close to processing payments for online song downloads, but it's not likely to be moving more broadly into micropayments any time soon. The San Jose, Calif.-based payment-processing unit of online auctioneer eBay Inc. finished adding functionality to its system last month to handle song payments and …
• 17 May

  Metavante Buys NYCE to Further An Ambitious Payments Plan

  Metavante Corp., which today announced it is paying $610 million in cash to buy the NYCE electronic funds transfer network from First Data Corp. and its bank owners, sees the deal as part of a nearly $1 billion payments strategy that has led the Milwaukee-based processor to snap up other …
• 14 May

  TransCore Looks to Expand Its RFID Pilot in Dallas

  A payment system based on toll-road transponders in Dallas will expand later this year beyond the five McDonald's restaurants that have been part of the radio-frequency identification (RFID) pilot since its inception two years ago. Hummelstown, Pa.-based TransCore, which installs RFID-based toll-road systems around the world, says it will add …
• 14 May

  Stats Show Ominous Increase in Spam and Phishing Attacks

  Recent industry statistics paint a grim picture of how pervasive spam, and with it e-mail fraud, is becoming in the U.S. transaction economy. Brightmail Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of anti-spam software, reports that the volume of spam hit 64% of some 96 billion e-mail messages its systems filtered in …
• 12 May

  Online Processor Digency Gets Close to Geo-Location Pilots

  Digency Inc. is within a month of signing its first clients for tests of a new system it has developed that fights e-commerce fraud by pinpointing Web users' geographic location, according to Ed R. Starrs, chief executive of the El Dorado Hills, Calif.-based e-commerce processor. Dubbed “Geocate,” the product has …
• 10 May

  E-Checks Score 27% Growth in the First Quarter

  Use of the automated clearing house for various electronic consumer transactions continued to climb in the first quarter, rising 27% from the fourth quarter of 2003 and 123% over the year-ago period, according to the National Automated Clearing House Association, Herndon, Va. Electronic checks?in which transactions are converted to electronic …
• 10 May

  A Pulse Survey Shows Fees, Restrictions Risk Debit Users’ Ire

  A new national survey of debit card holders indicates a significant portion of consumers would be inclined to punish retailers and banks if they imposed fees or tried to restrict the range of accepted payment products. When asked how they would react if a merchant no longer accepted their debit …
• 6 May

  Metavante Buys AFS And Becomes a Player in Image Exchange

  Metavante Corp. announced today it has agreed to buy Advanced Financial Solutions Inc., an Oklahama City-based company specializing in check-processing technology and owner of the Endpoint Exchange, a network that routes electronic check images among processors and financial institutions. No price was announced, though Metavante officials said this acquisition, in …