Transaction Processing

Despite the economic downturn and softening volumes, MasterCard Inc. put in a “solid” first quarter, Robert Selander, MasterCard president and chief executive, said early Friday. “Our volumes have been impacted by significant headwinds, such as slower cross-border travel, lower gas prices, and an appreciating dollar,” Selander said at an analysts' …

It's been implicit for a while, but eBay Inc. on Wednesday made it clear that it has big hopes for its PayPal payments subsidiary as the company evolves from its core Internet auction business. “PayPal's opportunity and its niche is to power all of e-commerce,” eBay president and chief executive …

Airlines lost more than $1.4 billion to online fraudsters in 2008, representing about 1.3% of their Web-generated revenues. Those are two key findings from a first-of-its-kind survey about air carriers' Internet-related fraud. Mountain View, Calif.-based CyberSource Corp. commissioned the survey with Airline Information LLC, which produces conferences and publications about …

Hypercom Corp. reports it is starting to see interest building in a service that allows merchants to inject new encryption keys in their point-of-sale terminals through network connections, eliminating the need to visit stores or send the devices out to have the job done. “It's been a pretty substantial effort” …

In an unprecedented effort to thwart data breaches, the three leading vendors of payment card terminals on Wednesday put aside their normally fierce rivalries to announce creation of a non-profit industry group to implement common security standards and improve knowledge about security issues. “The self interest aligns with the public …

First Atlantic Commerce this week issued a strongly worded statement distancing itself from an investigation launched by the U.S. Department of Justice of offshore transactions. First Data Corp. last week said it was reviewing documents Justice filed in federal court seeking information on First Data merchants that sell or provide …

U.S. automakers and lots of banks are finding their business models under severe stress, but not so money-transfer businesses despite a likely decline in transfer volume this year, according to new research from Aite Group LLC. The industry, especially big players such as The Western Union Co. and MoneyGram International …

The recent massive data breaches at RBS WorldPay Inc. and Heartland Payment Systems Inc. ?two merchant acquirers deemed in compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard by qualified assessors?left many in the industry questioning the effectiveness of the PCI standard. But a newly released report from Verizon Business concludes …

Inexorable forces are reducing the ranks of payments processors and electronic bill-payment providers, as the planned buy-out of Metavante Corp. by Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) shows. Remaining ones such Online Resources Corp. are vulnerable to Wall Street pressure, as a proxy fight in progress shows. But some companies …

A Federal Reserve Bank proposal to speed up settlement times for certain automated clearing house transactions has provoked at least one electronic-payments executive to offer an alternative proposal that he says will accelerate clearing times without the threat to banks he sees in the Fed's idea. Danne Buchanan, chief executive …