Transaction Processing

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 …

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 …

A Dublin, Ohio-based startup is leveraging air-courier logistics and aggregation efficiencies to wring revenues out of a dying business—the so-called substitute check. Liberty Processing & Services Innovation went live only five months ago and is now printing and delivering about 3 million checks a month on behalf of five client …

One of the key tenets of the 6-year-old Payment Card Industry data security standard (PCI) is that merchants should never store unencrypted card data in their systems. But data generated from a recent beta test of a new system-scanning tool shows many merchants, knowingly or unknowingly, are violating this basic …

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 …

Big debit card issuer TCF Financial Corp. might need to lay off more than 2,000 employees to offset potential revenue losses if the Federal Reserve Board’s most draconian debit interchange price-control proposal takes effect, TCF said in recent court filings. Wayzata, Minn.-based TCF also said that its annual revenue loss …

ATM network changes and legislation rank as the top worries of ATM independent sales organizations, while declining transaction volumes also keep many ATM ISO executives up at night, according to newly released survey results. Kahuna ATM Solutions, a Bloomington, Ill.-based ATM ISO that services smaller ISOs, commissioned the survey, which …

Continuing a chargeback-streamlining process that began back in 2004, Visa Inc. in April will no longer require card issuers to obtain signed paper documentation in disputes involving transactions the cardholder claims are fraudulent. Instead, issuers may submit the required documentation electronically. Visa is not mandating that issuers eliminate signed documentation, …

A small-business trade group and Canada’s leading merchant acquirer reached a deal on Thursday that seemingly ends a dispute that, had it continued on its original course, might have transformed Canada’s seemingly voluntary code of conduct for payments companies into a mandatory one. At issue was a Dec. 30 letter …