Private-equity financing continued to make itself felt this week in the transaction-processing business, with Blackstone Capital Partners VLP's $7.8 billion bid for Alliance Data Systems Corp. and GTCR Golder Rauner LLC's decision to sell TransFirst LLC to an even bigger investment house, Welsh, Carson, Anderson, & Stowe, for $683 million. …

Visa International Inc. on Tuesday reported that it has named Joseph W. Saunders, the card-industry veteran it selected as interim leader of Visa Inc. in February, as the entity's permanent chairman and chief executive officer as it prepares to unify its far-flung regional organizations and become a publicly held company. …

Prepaid card processor eCommLink Inc. is joining with mobile phone and payment technology providers to offer a cell phone and prepaid debit MasterCard tied to a single account. The prepaid MasterCard function eventually will be incorporated into the phone, enabling consumers to use the phone for payments at merchants' points …

Amid highly publicized data breaches at major chains like TJX Cos. Inc. and Stop & Shop Supermarket Cos., large merchants are making progress in achieving compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI), though nearly two-thirds of them have still not been certified as meeting the standard. Some 35% …

The bank card networks are staking out major positions in the business of reloading prepaid debit cards, in a move that leverages their existing networks and could give a boost to efforts to bring electronic financial services to the underserved consumer market. At the same time, their entry into reloads …

It's early yet, but both daily transactions and average order value have been rising for payments accepted by TigerDirect Inc.'s Web site through online payment system SECURE-eBill, says Marwan Forzley, the chief executive of Ottawa-based MODASolutions, which markets the system to online merchants. TigerDirect, a Miami-based merchant that sells electronics …

Mutual need brought Electronic Clearing House Inc. (ECHO) and Intuit Inc. together in the $142 million deal, announced last week, that will make Camarillo, Calif-based processor ECHO part of Intuit, Mountain View, Calif., some time in the first quarter (Digital Transactions News, Dec. 15). Intuit, marketer of the popular QuickBooks …

Intuit Inc. has notched yet another acquisition calculated to augment its widely used accounting software with electronic-payments capability by agreeing to pay $142 million in cash to buy Electronic Clearing House Inc. (ECHO), a publicly held, Camarillo, Calif.-based processor of card and automated clearing house transactions. The deal, which is …

While American consumers were flocking to the stores on Friday and whipping out their credit and debit cards for payment, their Canadian counterparts were forced to find cash, their checkbooks, or to come back later because the network of the nation's largest merchant acquirer went down for two and a …

A new electronic check-conversion application set to go live in March at retail and other check-accepting businesses could become one of the fastest-growing products ever introduced for the automated clearing house (ACH) network, generating 425 million transactions in 2007, predicts a new study from Boston-based market researcher Celent LLC. The …