Nearly two years after introducing a same-day bill-payment service, Metavante Corp. reported on Tuesday its client financial institutions are seeing a 10% adoption rate among active online bill payers on average after 19 months of offering the product. The average rate after nine months is approximately 5%, the Milwaukee-based banking …

A new service from specialty payment-services provider Highway Toll Administration LLC seeks to boost electronic toll-booth payments by making toll transponders available to customers who reserve rental cars through the big online travel booking site Travelocity.com. Great Neck, N.Y.-based HTA introduced the mail-order service, called TravelPass, Jan. 29. “The TravelPass …

In a move that may indicate a thawing of relations between mobile operators on the one hand and banks and card networks on the other, Visa Inc. announced on Wednesday it will work with the London-based GSM Association to develop standards for mobile payments and handset-based money transfers. The first …

A group that has been investigating possible rules changes for the automated clearing house network to account for mobile payments plans to present its proposals by the end of March, according to a senior executive at NACHA, the organization that regulates the ACH. The Mobile Banking Work Group, a NACHA-sponsored …

A new chief executive has taken over at merchant processor RBS WorldPay Inc. just as news erupted this week of a major worldwide ATM fraud that relied on card data stolen from the processor's system last year. Ian Stuttard took the helm of the Atlanta-based company, a unit of Royal …

Some experts have predicted that the recession would create opportunities in the merchant-acquiring businesses, especially if independent sales organizations or other merchant processors decide to sell their portfolios or seek well-capitalized partners. Those opportunities seem to be just what venture-capital firm Austin Ventures is pursuing with the creation of Century …

Don't look for Facebook to get into the payments business any time soon. According to a report this week in “Inside Facebook,” a Web site that tracks Facebook developments for software developers and marketers, the social network has put on hold a payments platform that the network had announced a …

A startup company called Bling Nation Ltd., which debuted this week, plans to combine contactless-payment technology with an on-us approach to debit transactions that it says will cut transaction costs for both community banks and merchants. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based processor is in discussions with five financial institutions and plans …

Retail sales are slumping and stores are closing, but the online retailing channel?and thereby online payment transaction volumes?will come through relatively unscathed, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy and Research. Javelin's latest online retail payments forecast predicts Internet retail purchases will total $148 billion this year, up 10.4% …

The electronic-payments industry can expect the well-established consumer shift away from credit cards and toward debit and prepaid cards to continue in today's turbulent economic climate, but other changes are afoot as the financial landscape rapidly changes, according to Maynard, Mass-based Mercator Advisory Group Inc. Some of the most significant …