While electronic payment methods continue to gain ground against paper-based payments, consumers show widely varying attitudes toward specific types of electronic methods, according to a recently released report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The paper, which the Boston Fed published last month and is based on a representative …

With one week to go until Cyber Monday, the e-commerce equivalent of the day after Thanksgiving in physical stores, the early read on the 2009 e-commerce holiday-shopping season is that it will probably continue 2008's trends. Last year was most notable for its decline in average tickets as consumers put …

First Data Corp. has begun integrating fraud-screening software from an outside vendor that it will offer on a per-transaction basis to its e-commerce merchants. The move brings the software, called Interceptas, within reach of tens of thousands of small online sellers at a time when online fraud is expected to …

Despite widespread efforts to educate small merchants about the Payment Card Industry data-security standards (PCI DSS), a large majority still don't understand fully the complex requirements, according to a study released today by the National Retail Federation, ControlScan and the PCI Knowledge Base. The survey of 220 so-called Level 4 …

As PayPal Inc. recovers from a major?and apparently unprecedented?system outage on Monday, questions are starting to emerge about the actual impact on online merchants and about the e-commerce processor's preparedness for such emergencies. PayPal reported late in the day that its network was functioning normally again after the failure of …

A company founded by the man behind Capital One Financial Corp.'s decoupled debit program is introducing what it terms a “next-generation debit rewards” system that allows banks to provide cost-free rewards to cardholders. Under the system developed by Atlanta-based Cardlytics, merchants fund rewards that will be offered to banks' online-banking …

A sweeping new report from a Canadian Senate committee recommends the federal government create a payment-system oversight board, ban percentage-based debit card interchange for three years, and permit merchants to surcharge for card transactions. Those are just some of the proposals in the report as Canada confronts many of the …

The trend toward using adhesive tags to give mobile phones contactless-payment capability is going one step farther?now at least one startup is marketing a small sheet of vinyl that wraps around the entire mobile device and contains a contactless chip-and-antenna inlay. Mobile Payment Skins LLC launched last week to offer …

The battle to win over online merchants with low transaction fees intensified on Tuesday with the introduction by a Montreal-based startup of a payment platform that offers free processing for orders up to $40. UpClick, which started operations about 18 months ago, has more than a dozen software publishers using …

Check volumes may be declining, but check-related crime remains by far the most common type of payment fraud reported by corporate financial officers. What's more, while overall losses still remain small, fraud attempts increased last year and the recession could be a cause, according to the Association for Financial Professionals. …