Transaction Processing

MasterCard International announced today it will launch pilots of its PayPass electronic payment system on mobile phones from Motorola Inc. The Purchase, N.Y.-based card company says the pilots will get under way at a “variety” of unspecified locations in the U.S by the end of the year. The Motorola phones …

PayPal Inc. late this afternoon says it is making headway against the software glitch that has plagued its Web site since Friday, rendering it inaccessible at times for both buyers and sellers who use the PayPal electronic payment system. “We made progress today, and we've got eBay and PayPal technical …

A veteran ATM network executive thinks he can succeed at building a national health-care transaction-processing system, though similar efforts have a dismal record of failure. The executive, Joseph E. Wolfson, founder of the Metroteller electronic funds transfer network, expects the HealthTransaction Network to begin processing transactions from health-care insurance companies …

Albertson's Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based chain of supermarkets, will install and test a biometric-based system to authenticate electronic transactions by the end of the first quarter next year. The system, which relies on mathematically derived templates of consumers' fingerprints, comes from San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, which has been aggressively …

With the effective date for the Check Clearing for the 21st Century (Check 21) Act only 22 days away, few electronic payments observers doubt that the efficiencies of check imaging and image exchange will benefit banks. A lingering question, though, has been how much it will benefit retailers who accept …

Authorize.net, which has been the victim of a series of denial-of-service attacks since Sept. 15, says today it has implemented unspecified “industry-leading solutions” that are thwarting the assaults on its data centers, which process card transactions for more than 100,000 merchants. It also says its engineers from the start of …

First Data Corp.'s letter of intent with Bank of America Corp., which includes processing services from FDC for BofA ATMs as well as for debit card transactions secured by personal identification numbers, amounts to a big win for the Denver-based processor after a string of stinging losses, observers say. “Obviously, …

The market for wireless point-of-sale credit and debit card transactions is about to heat up. Founded in 2002, Boston-based Way Systems Inc. is introducing a point-to-point processing system that includes mobile phones equipped with card swipes, security and transaction programming, and keypads for personal identification numbers. The swipe, keypad, and …

A network built by New York-based Small Value Payments Co. (SVPCo.) to allow banks to exchange check images has begun operations with exchanges between KeyBank and J.P. Morgan Chase. The network began with volume at a “controlled” level to allow each bank to test operations, according to an announcement from …

Nine electronic funds transfer networks have now approved a $1,600 retrofit kit from a Cincinnati-based ATM refurbisher and servicer for use in ATMs on their systems. The kit, called 3DESPlus, allows ATM owners to upgrade existing machines to make them comply with new security requirements from the bank card companies …