Looking to bolster its business with retailers, Atlanta-based CheckFree Corp. this week unveiled its CheckFreePay Link service aimed at helping stores draw more walk-in traffic by offering bill-payment services for local utilities and other billers. CheckFree Pay's existing CheckFreePay network has 11,000 agent sites located in check-cashing outlets, grocery stores, …

Pay By Touch Inc., which on Monday introduced a new, personal-computer-based authentication service based on fingerprint identification, plans to couple the new service with online payments and loyalty programs some time in the first half of 2007. The new product, called TrueMe, relies on the San Francisco company's technology, along …

Image-exchange volumes continue to climb at a steady pace, and so does the volume of checks settled through image networks as images rather than as paper substitute checks, new data show. SVPCO's Image Payments Network, which links 15 large financial institutions and is the country's largest image-exchange system, reported Monday …

Consumers spend up to $1.5 trillion a year using on small purchases using cash, depending on who's estimating, but converting so-called micropayments into electronics will be one of the payment card industry's tougher challenges. Experts contacted by this newsletter's sister publication Digital Transactions magazine for an upcoming story on micropayments …

The new president of Moneris Solutions Inc., the U.S. arm of Canada's leading merchant-acquiring operation, says he will diversify the company's distribution channels and at the same time seek profitable niches in a highly competitive industry. Buffalo Grove, Ill.-based Moneris currently derives most of its U.S. transactions from merchants booked …

Consumers who participated in a recently ended test in Atlanta of contactless payment on mobile phones may have warmed to the technology (Digital Transactions News, Sept. 8), but banks, transaction processors, independent sales organizations, and other players looking to cash in could now face a formidable hurdle: the wireless phone …

Three days after Congress passed a law restricting payments for Internet wagers, what seems clear is that the implications for banks and transaction processors are mixed. Observers say the new law will likely prevent most U.S. banks or third-party companies that still process online gambling payments from continuing to do …

In coming months, software colossus Microsoft Corp. will be reaping bushels of publicity about Microsoft Windows Vista, the newest version of the world's leading desktop operating system that's scheduled for release early next year. Along for the ride, and with a novel approach to the electronic payments business, is a …

Yodlee Inc. announced Tuesday it plans to introduce new technology that could heat up competition in electronic bill payment by letting consumers switch more easily from an online bill-payment program at one bank to that offered by another. The Redwood City, Calif.-based provider of Internet banking software says it will …

In a deal on which the two parties spent the weekend hammering out final details, Discover Financial Services LLC and Global Payments Inc. on Monday said Global would take over processing and other acquiring functions on Discover transactions with merchants for which Global processes Visa USA and MasterCard Worldwide transactions. …