Dallas-based processor TransFirst today began marketing a Web-based payments-processing engine that was developed by a company it acquired a year ago and is currently being used by 3,500 merchants. Called Transaction Central, the new product acts as a virtual terminal for physical merchants and a payments gateway for Net retailers, …

Now that Metavante Corp. has closed on its acquisition of the NYCE electronic funds network and First Data Corp. has put its acquisition and integration of Concord EFS Inc. and its Star Systems network behind it, look for competition among the remaining regional EFT networks to become even more intense, …

A trade group that is developing a new transaction-messaging standard based on extensible markup language (XML) for financial transactions says it is now turning its attention to point-of-sale payments. The Interactive Financial Exchange Forum, Falls Church, Va., released earlier this year a version of the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) standard …

Electronic funds transfer network Star Systems Inc., which last month announced a new product that makes use of its EFT network to verify and settle checks written at the point of sale in the same way Star processes debit cards, says it expects Star Chek Direct to begin processing transactions …

With its new real-time check-verification and settlement product announced yesterday, Star Systems Inc. will be offering merchants and transaction processors a service that converts paper checks to electronic transactions just as retailers and financial institutions are preparing for the advent of check-imaging technology. Though Maitland, Fla.-based Star, the nation's largest …

Yahoo Finance, whose PayDirect person-to-person payment service has been in operation domestically for three years, is now offering PayDirect International to allow electronic remittances from domestic users to recipients overseas. Announced this week, the new international payment service is an effort by Yahoo Finance, a unit of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo …