Acquisitive financial-institution processor Jack Henry & Associates Inc. on Monday said it has completed its $300 million buyout of iPay Technologies, a low-profile but fast-growing electronic bill-payment processor that will add substantial mass to Jack Henry’s already sizable bill-pay business. Monett, Mo.-based Jack Henry provides bill-pay services to 1,050 of …

With online bill payment evolving into a mainstream service from financial institutions, the demographic profile of its users also is beginning to look more mainstream, according to new survey results from bank processor Fiserv Inc. But the findings indicate that the bill-pay market’s rapid evolution means banks and credit unions …

The future of payments belongs to innovators that use software platforms to develop new services that can be quickly brought to market, according to David S. Evans, an economist and veteran payment-industry observer. Evans, keynote speaker at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s annual payments conference Thursday, cited PayPal Inc., …

With processors, banks, and merchants across the country buttoning down credit and debit card data to keep them out of criminal hands, processors are starting to turn their attention to the information they and their client merchants collect from automated clearing house transactions. ProPay Inc., a Lehi, Utah-based merchant processor …

Banks, merchants, and others scratching their heads over the exploding popularity of social networking and its close cousin, social gaming, can harness the online phenomenon for payments but will likely have to jettison decades of settled thinking, experts say. Banks, in particular, will have to wrestle with knotty problems surrounding …

Online PINless debit transactions could get a boost if a package of four new mobile-payments services from Obopay Inc. proves to be a hit. Dubbed Mobile Money for Banks, Obopay’s new white-label service has another interesting twist besides PINless debit in that it will enable consumers to accept payment cards. …

Six months after announcing it will process online PIN-debit transactions through PayPal Inc., the Star electronic funds transfer network has signed a number of member banks for the new service, with “implementations in progress,” says Julie Saville, vice president for product management at Star. Despite the tie-up with PayPal, however, …

After five months of discussion, the Canadian government is out with the final draft of its Code of Conduct for the payments industry. The merchant-friendly code is supposedly voluntary, but proposed legislation could force it upon payments companies that don't adopt it on their own by May 17. “Payment card …

The growing interest of private-equity firms in merchant processors showed itself again Wednesday when the big independent sales organization Mercury Payment Systems Inc. disclosed that Silver Lake would take a 60% interest in the company. Meanwhile, private-equity executives were out in force at the Electronic Transactions Association annual meeting in …

The use of two-dimensional bar-code technology for mobile payments appears to be picking up momentum. On the heels of a major expansion of the technology, announced last week by Starbucks Coffee Co. and Target Corp., a startup company this week announced it is launching a so-called private beta for a …