Transaction Processing

Online shoppers hit virtual stores on Monday in greater numbers than they ever have before on the Monday after Thanksgiving, but a number of leading e-commerce sites struggled to keep up with all the traffic, according to reports released on Tuesday. On so-called Cyber Monday, consumers performed 1.9 million transactions …

Results from an Aite Group LLC survey of merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations released on Monday show that processors consider “margin compression,” high interchange, and dealing with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard as the top three challenges facing the acquiring industry. The results, part of a report called …

USA Technologies Inc., a Malvern, Pa.-based vendor of card-reading devices for vending machines, this week announced another pact with MasterCard Inc. that will put USA Technologies' e-Port G6 magnetic-stripe and contactless payment card readers in 4,000-plus more vending machines. The deal represents the fourth between the two companies in the …

An outside manager with restructuring experience, Thomas Lumsden of FTI Consulting Inc., is now running financially troubled biometric-payment provider Pay By Touch under terms of a Delaware court order signed Friday, San Francisco-based Pay By Touch announced on Monday. The Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington appointed Lumsden, senior managing director …

The ax is falling at First Data Corp. two months after the huge processor's $29 billion leveraged buyout by private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data announced Thursday that it is cutting 6% of its workforce, or about 1,700 employees. Thanks to recent acquisitions, however, …

Online fraud rates are holding steady but the cost of fraud is going up as e-commerce grows and companies hire more people to weed out suspect orders, according to CyberSource Corp.'s 9th annual e-commerce fraud survey. The merchant processor and risk-management firm's recent survey of 318 American and Canadian retailers …

Off-price retailer TJX Cos. Inc. might hold the dubious honor of being the merchant where the nation's worst breach of payment card data occurred, but you'd never know it by looking at the company's latest financials. Revenue and profits are up, and executives made only passing reference to the breach …

Still financially challenged but claiming to be on the mend, TRM Corp., operator of the nation's second-largest non-bank ATM network, reduced its loss in the third quarter as it culled underperforming machines and cut expenses. The Portland, Ore.-based firm on Friday reported a net loss of $4.89 million compared with …

In a move long expected by software developers, merchant processors, and others, the PCI Security Standards Council this week said it is adding a new standard for point-of-sale software based on Visa Inc.'s set of best practices for card-processing applications. The action is aimed at strengthening the software component of …

Biometrics payment technology provider Pay By Touch reaped a bushel of favorable publicity last week when it launched its fingerprint-based system at 10 Chicago-area Shell stations in the company's first petroleum-sector rollout. What went unmentioned, however, was that Pay By Touch's parent company was entangled in court fights on the …