Transaction Processing

BitPass Inc. has acquired rival micropayments processor Yaga Inc. in a deal that hands the Menlo, Calif.-based BitPass technology to support subscription and payment-aggregation models. The acquisition agreement, terms of which were not released, calls for BitPass to take over Yaga's platform, intellectual property, and client contracts. Staff at San …

Nashville, Tenn.-based merchant processor iPayment Inc. has agreed to be acquired and taken private by two of the company's top executives in a deal valued at about $770 million. The company's board of directors, along with a special committee of that board established last spring to investigate possible offers for …

A technology that allows consumers to use their debit cards and PINs to buy items on the Internet will likely undergo tests with at least one electronic funds transfer network starting the first half of 2006. A full commercial rollout involving at least one major merchant should be in progress …

BitPass Inc.'s agreement with Microsoft Corp. to process payments for digital content sold through regional sites operated by Microsoft's MSN portal may be just the start of a broader payments relationship with the Redmond, Wash. computing giant, says Douglas S. Knopper, BitPass's newly hired chief executive. Knopper, who joined Menlo …

Online-banking-software provider Corillian Corp. is planning to sell banks on housing their own bill-payment data and using a variety of processors, rather than relying on those processors as exclusive providers of data-warehousing and transaction processing. Hillsboro, Ore.-based Corillian, which earlier this year acquired InteliData Technologies Corp., a vendor of data-warehousing …

Debit card transactions authenticated by a biometric scan rather than a PIN will likely start flowing through at least one electronic funds transfer network by the second quarter of 2006, according to Pay By Touch Solutions, a San Francisco-based supplier of fingerprint-authentication systems for point-of-sale electronic payment. Eric Bachman, chief …

An image-exchange network controlled by some of the nation's largest banks says volume in the network reached 8.8 million items in November, up 38% over October and nearly 500 times greater than in January, when the system began commercial operation. SVPCO, a unit of New York-based The Clearing House Payments …

In the debate between advocates of software-based authentication and backers of hardware devices, the former are winning, and this week's acquisition of Cyota Inc. by RSA Security Inc. proves it, says PassMark Security LLC. “To have the largest token provider in the world recognize no-hardware, two-factor authentication, it clearly endorses …

In a move that could herald a thrust into the rapidly growing point-of-sale stored-value payments market, PayPal Inc. is processing prepaid accounts behind cafeteria payments for its own employees as well as for those of two other technology companies in Silicon Valley. For the past year, the online-payments processor, a …

The new chief executive of First Data Corp. is likely to bring renewed focus to the processing giant's merchant-acquiring business and move quickly to resolve the drag on growth represented by the company's processing business that supports card issuers, say industry observers. At the same time, Henry C. (Ric) Duques, …