News

February, 2009

• 12 February

  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, …
• 12 February

  Merchant Warehouse Launches a Terminal-Based Rate Cutter

  A software program that works with point-of-sale terminals allows small merchants to process card transactions at the lowest available interchange rates and arms them with cost-saving technology that up to now was available only to large retailers, according to the independent sales organization that introduced the technology this week. “Tier …
• 11 February

  Noca Stresses Low-Cost ACH Payments for Online Merchants

  Noca Inc., which this week launched a beta version of an online-payments product that relies on the automated clearing house network, plans to have a commercial service ready for launch by June, Pankaj Gupta, president and founder of the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup tells Digital Transactions News. One feature the …
• 11 February

  How Checking Fees Create An Opening for Prepaid Cards

  Banks claim they want to serve so-called underbanked and unbanked consumers, but the fees they slap onto checking accounts, particularly non-sufficient funds (NSF) and overdraft fees, are creating a strong business case for prepaid cards to displace a substantial number of checking accounts, according to a new research report. Using …
• 10 February

  Mazooma Launches As Consumers Seek out Alternatives to Credit

  A downward-spiraling economy is accelerating what had already been a rapidly developing trend for startups to introduce online payment methods as alternatives to bank cards. Indeed, one such company, Miami-based Mazooma Inc., launched a cash-based commercial service on Tuesday with the premise that consumers are looking for ways to buy …
• 9 February

  More ID Fraud Cases Stem from Data Breaches, Report Says

  The good news about identity fraud: dollar losses per incident are going down. The bad news: incidents are up. The bad news for merchants: fraud victims, especially young adults, will punish merchants they associate with ID fraud. And some bad news for the payments industry in general: more ID fraud …
• 5 February

  It’s Hunker-Down Time for the Bank Card Networks

  If the flow of recessionary credit card spending could be likened to the Niagara River, MasterCard Inc. has gone over the falls while Visa is still just upstream at Grand Island. MasterCard on Thursday reported fourth-quarter drops of nearly 10% in U.S. credit card purchase volume and more than 6% …
• 5 February

  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 …
• 4 February

  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 …
• 4 February

  RBS WorldPay Rocked by ATM Fraud As New CEO Takes the Helm

  A new chief executive has taken over at merchant processor RBS WorldPay Inc. just as news erupted this week of a major worldwide ATM fraud that relied on card data stolen from the processor's system last year. Ian Stuttard took the helm of the Atlanta-based company, a unit of Royal …