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A new, eight-member banking group that is working to smooth out the remaining kinks in image exchange, the process by which paper checks can be turned into images and settled electronically, has released four recommendations and is working on another eight. The Image Industry Interoperability Group, or i3G as it …
Read More »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, …
Read More »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 …
Read More »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% …
Read More »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 …
Read More »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 …
Read More »Court: AmEx Can’t Use Arbitration To Thwart Merchant Class Actions
A three-judge panel for the federal appellate court in New York reversed a lower court by ruling Friday that the arbitration provision in American Express Co. merchant agreements that requires merchants to give up their right to participate in class-action lawsuits against AmEx, or even to challenge the company as …
Read More »Can Facebook Grasp the Payments Opportunity Now in Front of It?
This is the fifth installment of a six-part series on how Web 2.0 is likely to transform the payments business. Prior articles focused on how new providers are leading the transition from the first generation of e-commerce, where a buyer had a one-way relationship with a seller's Web site and …
Read More »The Recession Is Sending Rates of Friendly Fraud Up, Processors Say
With the recession throwing more and more people out of work by the day, payments processors are reporting that their merchants are experiencing sharp increases in e-commerce chargebacks stemming from so-called friendly fraud. This is the fraud that results when a consumer repudiates a transaction as unauthorized in hopes of …
Read More »Credit Losses at Bill Me Later Climb Past 8% But Don’t Faze eBay
Credit losses at Bill Me Later Inc. are manageable despite the economic downdraft of the past year, officials at eBay Inc. told analysts recently. The Timonium, Md.-based provider of so-called transactional credit for online transactions, which eBay bought last year and paired with its PayPal online-payments unit (Digital Transactions News, …
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