n Visa Inc. announced on Wednesday a digital wallet aimed at increasing its share of transactions in mobile payments, e-commerce, and at the point of sale. n The digital wallet will store all the payment cards in a consumer’s wallet, including non-Visa branded cards, Jim McCarthy, Visa's head of global …

  Security Peter Lucas While it’s effective against malware like the pesky Zeus Trojan, banks have been slow to adopt out-of-band authentication. Now, with mobile and P2P applications growing, that may soon change. Imagine the following scenario: A cybercrook plants a malware Trojan, infamously known as Zeus, in the Web …

Cover Story Transaction volumes are rising as NACHA executes on an ambitious agenda of new payments initiatives. Can everything  the ACH network’s governing body  wants come to pass? By Jim Daly Think you’re busy? Of course you are, but the folks at NACHA, governing body of the automated clearing house …

E-Commerce Peter Lucas Gateways have always had to reinvent themselves. Now, with e-commerce returning to double-digit growth and mobile payments poised for takeoff, they have to do it again—and this time with more competition than ever. Since their inception about a decade ago, gateways have marketed value-added services, such as …

Opinion & Analysis Steve Mott Banks and card networks argue Durbin and other recent regulation will hurt small banks and consumers. But take heart, the sky will remain firmly in place. The cries of anguish from the banking industry and from the payments players that live off banking’s traditional revenue …

P2P Books a Fast Ride on EFT Rails Thanks to new agreements involving two major electronic funds transfer networks, person-to-person (P2P) electronic payments are poised to get a whole lot faster. Under a deal announced in February, NYCE Payments Network LLC will offer CashEdge Inc.’s Popmoney person-to-person payments service to …

M-Commerce What NFC Should Look Like Steve Mott By most accounts, the wireless-carrier-based near-field communication (NFC) mobile payments initiative known as Isis (formally announced late last year but rumored for months before) is still falling short of the mark with respect to a winning formula for prying payments away from …

E-Commerce The Bill-Pay Horse Race Peter Lucas After years of lagging behind, bill-payment Web sites sponsored by financial institutions finally have achieved parity with biller-direct sites. But the outcome of the long-term race is still uncertain, given some compelling features billers’ sites retain. After slugging it out for market share …

Networks Free of IRDs, Check 21 Challenges the ACHLinda Punch The Check 21 law created the substitute check, or image-replacement document. After six years and a brief boom, IRDs are on their way to the payments dustbin, just as Check 21’s backers intended. What are the implications for ACH payments? …

Credit cards will continue to dominate online payments for at least the next five years, but they will lose share to debit cards, alternative payments, and prepaid and gift cards, according to new projections from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin predicts in its “2010 Online Retail Payments Update and Forecast” …