Transaction Processing

First Data Corp. chairman and chief executive Henry C. “Ric” Duques on Tuesday painted a rosy picture of the downsized card processor during his first earnings conference call since the recent spin-off of First Data's largest division, remittance kingpin Western Union Co. Greenwood Village, Colo.-based First Data posted net income …

Qpass Inc., whose software handles mobile-commerce transactions for wireless networks, processed almost $500 million in digital-content sales, up 50% over the like period in 2005, according to Amdocs Inc., Qpass's parent company. Transaction volume grew at an average quarterly rate of 12% in the period, Amdocs said. The St. Louis-based …

Pay By Touch Inc., which on Monday introduced a new, personal-computer-based authentication service based on fingerprint identification, plans to couple the new service with online payments and loyalty programs some time in the first half of 2007. The new product, called TrueMe, relies on the San Francisco company's technology, along …

Image-exchange volumes continue to climb at a steady pace, and so does the volume of checks settled through image networks as images rather than as paper substitute checks, new data show. SVPCO's Image Payments Network, which links 15 large financial institutions and is the country's largest image-exchange system, reported Monday …

Responding in part to unique security issues created by electronic image exchange in the U.S., the nation's largest settler of clearinghouse check volume this week introduced a registry for what it calls image-survivable security features to protect check images from fraud. The registry, operated by the Dallas-based National Clearing House …

Rod Katzfey, the new boss of Comdata Processing Systems, has worked for some of the nation's biggest merchant acquirers?U.S. Bancorp, First Data Corp., and, most recently, ABN AMRO Merchant Services, where he was general manager. He expects that some day the company he joined this month as senior vice president …

Visa USA, which on Wednesday announced it has completed a massive, five-year project to overhaul its authorization platform, says the new system will allow the network to handle expected jumps in both the volume and diversity of electronic transactions. The overhaul, which its chief architect, John Partridge, calls “the single …

Bitpass Inc. is expected to announce next week a new processing platform that will, among other things, allow consumers to set up electronic wallets they can use to both pay for and store digital content like songs, videos, and games. The new platform, called the iMedia Commerce Engine, will support …

Problems with transactions could cost e-commerce merchants and other Internet businesses some $60 billion in sales through 2010, according to a consumer survey released Monday. Altogether, 88% of consumers reported problems with transactions at shopping, banking, travel, and insurance sites. About one-third of consumers who run into checkout or payment …

In coming months, software colossus Microsoft Corp. will be reaping bushels of publicity about Microsoft Windows Vista, the newest version of the world's leading desktop operating system that's scheduled for release early next year. Along for the ride, and with a novel approach to the electronic payments business, is a …