Thursday , January 9, 2025

Transaction Processing

After a Difficult Year, Lawlor Exits As CEO at Online Resources

Matthew P. Lawlor, the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive of Online Resources Corp., is retiring immediately as chief executive, the company announced early Tuesday. Lawlor will remain as chairman until Feb. 15 to assist with the transition, and then scale back to serving on the board of directors of the …

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Same-Day ACH Is ‘On Track,’ Says Fed, But Response Is Mixed

A plan by the Federal Reserve to speed up certain automated clearing house transactions so they will clear on the same day they are initiated is “attracting interest” from financial institutions that use the Fed to handle their ACH traffic, says Richard Oliver, an executive vice president at the Federal …

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Upbeat News from First Data on Average Tickets, Same-Store Sales

Christmas cheer for merchants and transaction processors came a little early this week with the news that both transaction volumes and dollar sales from cards for at least one major processor are finally trending up, yielding a scant but welcome uptick in average tickets. Even more encouraging: the increases came …

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As Online Bill Pay Surges, WEB Closes Gap with E-Check Leader ARC

Paper-based bill payments continued their decline in the third quarter while Internet bill payments gained more ground, according to the latest automated clearing house data. The accounts receivable conversion (ARC) code for paper checks sent to billers' lockboxes and then converted into electronic checks had 583.8 million transactions in the …

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VeriFone Brings a Terminal Maker’s Savvy to Mobile Payments

With a number of processors and software houses having introduced applications over the past year to let merchants process cards on smart phones, many observers wondered how long it would be before the established point-of-sale terminal vendors entered this market. On Tuesday morning, the answer came with VeriFone Holdings Inc.'s …

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Early Results Are Inconclusive for NACHA’s New IAT Code

The first statistics about the new automated clearing house code for international transactions are in, though it's too soon to draw conclusions about how popular the so-called IAT code will become. According to NACHA, governing body of the ACH, IAT had 303,802 transactions in September with a total value of …

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Peak Shopping Days Give Cause for Cautious Optimism on Payments

Electronic payments are showing signs of life as consumers open up their wallets and purses early in this holiday spending season. But just how wide they'll open those wallets and purses as the season goes on is uncertain. The early take is that volumes are up from 2008's anemic levels, …

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With Payments a Big Part of Health-Care Costs, Automation Efforts Arise

Low-hanging fruit it's not, but health care still remains one of the biggest untapped markets for electronic payments. A new report from Celent LLC estimates that $11 billion could be saved by automating just part of the health-care payments process. And a new industry group is forming to marshal the …

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A Proxy Fight Breaks Out at USA Technologies

USA Technologies Inc., the provider of contactless card readers and wireless transaction-processing services for vending machines, laundries and other venues, has become the latest payments-industry tech company whose management finds itself embroiled in a fight with shareholders angry about losses and slumping stock prices. Malvern, Pa.-based USA Technologies sent a …

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How the Rise of Smart Phones Could Unleash a Wave of Fraud

The increasing popularity of smart phones, which has given a big lift this year to consumer adoption of mobile banking and payments, has brought with it an ominous new threat of fraud. Last week, the Dutch security firm XS4All reported on a worm that infects iPhones and allows hackers to …

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Digital Transactions