Transaction Processing

It spawned the free-terminal craze, but now merchant processor United Bank Card Inc. is launching a service called Harbortouch POS intended to put the margin back into equipment sales to merchants. Harbortouch's business case is built on integrated hardware and software systems that perform a host of business-management functions, payments …

The trend toward combining electronic bill-payment services?particularly payments that post on the same day they're made?with walk-in remittance locations took on more momentum last week with the announcement that Online Resources Corp. will process expedited payments for DolEx Dollar Express Inc., a remittance operation belonging to Atlanta-based Global Payments Inc. …

Assurz Inc., the 3-year-old company that sought to boost consumer confidence in making Internet transactions by offering money-back guarantees on behalf of online merchants, filed for protection under Chapter 7 of the federal bankruptcy code on Monday. The company earlier this month abruptly shut down its service, leaving a trail …

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. and its PayPal payments service are generating headlines this week for enhancing their coverage of buyers' and sellers' losses when sales go bad. Less noticed but also important for merchants, however, are the enhanced risk controls for merchants that PayPal is quietly rolling out. Dubbed Fraud …

While most of the high-profile data breaches involving card numbers have happened at point-of-sale merchants, consumers continue to express reluctance about entering card information at e-commerce sites. And, for at least some of these sites, such consumer concerns may be justified, according to Nicholas J. Percoco, vice president of consulting …

The other shoe dropped on bank card interchange Thursday afternoon when U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., introduced a companion bill to the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 pending in the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee. Durbin's bill, including its name, is nearly identical to the House version introduced …

South Bend, Ind.-based 1st Source Bank is reissuing its entire portfolio of debit cards after a hacker or hackers broke into a bank server containing debit card data. No fraud has been discovered as a result of the intrusion, a bank executive tells Digital Transactions News. The $4.5-billion-asset bank with …

Six specialty types of vendors, processors, and other service providers that card issuers use lack specific guidelines on how to protect cardholder data under the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, according to a recent report from research firm TowerGroup Inc. These service providers thus represent “hot spots” that …

It's official: JPMorgan Chase & Co. and First Data Corp. will end their joint venture that owns Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC, the world's largest merchant acquirer, by the end of the year. The announcement on Tuesday morning was widely anticipated following the buyout of First Data last year by private-equity …

A payment method that lets merchants convert checks at the cash register into electronic transactions shows signs of picking up momentum across a spectrum of retailers. It's quite a turnaround for the point-of-purchase electronic-check application (POP), which relies on the automated clearing house network for settlement. Only a few years …