News

January, 2008

• 23 January

  Merchant Signings Help Fuel Fourth-Quarter Gains for PayPal

  E-commerce sales increases outpaced those at brick-and-mortar merchants during the 2007 holiday shopping season (Digital Transactions News, Jan. 14), and that strong growth along with the recruitment of new online merchants gave a fourth-quarter lift to Internet transaction processor PayPal Inc. The San Jose, Calif.-based company handled 203.9 million transactions …
• 22 January

  Nova’s Deal for Southern DataComm Gives It a Hospitality Gateway

  U.S. Bancorp's Nova Information Services Inc. merchant-acquiring subsidiary is diving headfirst into the increasingly competitive payment-gateway business with its pending acquisition of Southern DataComm Inc., a gateway with a big presence in the hospitality sector. Largo, Fla.-based Southern DataComm handles an estimated $50 billion-plus in annualized payment volume, according to …
• 22 January

  Visa Reports Mid-Sized Merchants Are Making PCI Progress

  Merchants accounting for two-thirds of Visa Inc.'s U.S. transaction volume have validated compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, Visa reported on Tuesday. This latest report from Visa comes in the wake of a Dec. 31 deadline for so-called Level 2 merchants?mid-sized merchants that submit 1 million …
• 21 January

  Phishing Sites Proliferate, But Experts Say Help Is on the Way

  The population of Web sites dedicated to the crime of phishing jumped markedly in October after dipping late in the summer, according to the latest data from the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The good news, though, is that experts appear to be working out a new way to shut down these …
• 17 January

  With Alogent, Goldleaf Steps onto the Remote-Deposit Escalator

  Brentwood, Tenn.-based Goldleaf Financial Solutions Inc., a technology-services provider for 2,800 community financial institutions, on Thursday took a big leap into the fast-growing niche of remote deposit capture by announcing its $42.5 million acquisition of Alogent Corp., a prominent purveyor of remote-deposit software. Until now, Goldleaf's core business has been …
• 16 January

  Global Payments Looks to New Platform for Faster Merchant Integration

  Having introduced a new processing platform to ease integration with payment software and hardware products, Global Payments Inc. on Wednesday announced it will work with NitroSell, a supplier of shopping-cart software, to allow NitroSell's merchants to process e-commerce transactions on the new system. Atlanta-based Global Payments last week announced it …
• 16 January

  Survey Hints at Role of Free Processing in Rise of Alternative Payments

  The trend toward acceptance of so-called alternative-payment products by online merchants is going strong and will likely continue for some time, driven largely by incentives for merchants and consumers alike and by ease of use, says Adam Cohen, principal at Brulant Inc., an interactive advertising agency in Cleveland. “I would …
• 15 January

  Ready Credit And CheckFree Get Set to Offer Kiosk-Based Bill Pay

  Kiosk-based electronic bill payments got another boost this week when processor Fiserv Inc.'s CheckFreePay walk-in bill-pay unit announced a deal with Ready Credit Corp. that will make bill-pay services available to consumers using cash at Ready Credit's 55 ReadyStation self-service kiosks by early spring. The kiosks, which already allow consumers …
• 14 January

  Final Numbers Show Robust Increases in Holiday Spending Online

  While 2007-08 holiday-season spending overall fell short of expectations, e-commerce sales soared, according to final numbers compiled by Dallas-based processor Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC. Ten online merchants for which Chase Paymentech processes transactions saw their total traffic jump 29% for the season, to 108.4 million transactions. Dollar volume grew at …
• 14 January

  Banks Comfortable with Prepaid Cards–Possibly Too Comfortable

  Financial-institution issuers of prepaid cards usable on general-purpose payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard are making money, but they may be missing opportunities by not exploring new market niches or checking out networks other than the one they already use. Those are some of the findings released Monday from …