Transaction Processing

Online-transaction processor PayPal Inc. processed 110.4 million transactions in the first quarter worth $6.23 billion, up 39% and 44% respectively over the year-ago period, according to figures released today by San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc., the company's parent. Of this transaction volume, some 71% came from auction activity, principally on …

Sensing a trend within banks toward pulling together credit, debit, checking, and other electronic payments-processing operations, IBM Corp. is getting ready to push an all-purpose retail payments engine for both bank back offices and third-party transaction processors. “It's a payments hub, and it's cheaper, faster, and easier to maintain,” than …

A project undertaken by the nation's largest banks to trade digital check images and substitute checks is trafficking 60,000 image files per night eight months after the first two banks hooked up to the network. SVPCO, a unit of The Clearing House, a New York-based payments processor, says volume has …

Merchant transactions processed by First Data Corp. grew 38% to 5.28 billion in the quarter ended March 31, sending acquiring processing fees up 19% to $682.7 million?or almost 13 cents per transaction–at the Denver-based processor, according to first-quarter figures released today together with comparisons to the year-ago period. Merchant transactions …

Mer-Tec Inc., an online transaction processor based in Lewisville, Texas, will switch on a micropayments service next week for handling online payments and rights management for digital content, with an emphasis on song and video downloads. The service, which Mer-Tec calls SecureCastle, will open with about 10 independent artists as …

PayPal Inc.'s experience with processing payments for music downloads is encouraging the San Jose, Calif.-based processor to begin investigating other micropayments markets, including downloadable games, electronic greeting cards, and news media. “The success of PayPal adoption for the music vertical has inspired us to look at other verticals,” says Peter …

Burger King Corp., the Miami-based fast-food giant, may be rolling out credit and signature-debit card acceptance chainwide, but don't look for its stores to accept PIN-based debit cards on a wide scale any time soon. Julian Gomez, director of operations, services, and programs for Burger King, says his chain is …

With hackers, phishers, and other criminals undermining the trust all transaction networks depend on for their survival, some experts say the time has come to fight back. In the following excerpt from “The Myth of Invincible Encryption,” an article that will appear in the May-June 2005 issue of Digital Transactions …

With transaction-data security a top-of-mind concern these days in the wake of such breaches as the ChoicePoint case and the theft of card data from the DSW Shoe Warehouse chain, executives for two leading security-audit firms say their merger couldn't have come at a more propitious time. Chicago-based Ambiron LLC …

After a year of trying to sell itself as a transaction gateway for brick-and-mortar merchants, Authorize.Net Corp. says it has learned one important lesson: when it comes to the point of sale, any Internet-enabled device is capable of being a POS terminal. As a result, the American Fork, Utah-based processor, …