With concern mounting about the adequacy of commonly used authentication technologies in online transactions, a technique devised by a major credit-reporting agency to secure the sale of consumer credit reports online is finding adoption among financial institutions and could appeal to Internet merchants. Equifax Information Services LLC is actively licensing …

Up to now, phishing schemes only worked if the fraudsters could entice recipients of their e-mail to visit transaction sites tricked up to look like the real thing, such as a fake eBay site or spoofed online banking site. The sites would collect login and other confidential information the criminals …

VeriSign Inc. says heavy promotion it's putting behind its new trust mark for e-commerce will drive the number of payment-gateway client sites displaying the mark from 40,000 currently to more than 70,000 by year's end. And it expects that number to double by the end of 2005. The Mountain View, …

The fledgling networks that traffic electronic check images rather than paper checks are looking for bigger volumes now that the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, popularly known as Check 21, has finally become law. “Now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon,” says Mark Craig, general manager of Endpoint Exchange, …

The Canadian Payments Association is planning to implement a new rule for clearing Internet transactions involving the electronic debiting of consumer accounts. The association hopes to finalize the rule in December, which if approved would take effect early next year, according to Roger Dowdall, vice president of communication and education …

Metavante Corp. continues to pursue an aggressive acquisition strategy in electronic payments with it announcement today that it agreed to buy VECTORsgi, a software company in Addison, Texas, that sells check-imaging software. The acquisition, valued at $100 million in cash plus another $35 million to be paid if certain targets …

The National Automated Clearing House Association, Herndon, Va., is preparing to launch a test early next spring of a new electronic transaction type for payments on the Internet. The new payment category would be best suited for payments to so-called spontaneous retailing sites?those operated by hard goods merchants, rather than …

Debit card fraud in Canada last year amounted to $44 million ($34 million U.S.), which criminals drained from some 27,000 accounts, according to data recently compiled by Interac, the national electronic funds transfer network. The study represents the first attempt in Canada to measure fraud losses sustained by holders of …

An arrangement hammered out last spring between Toronto-based Acxsys Corp. and the NYCE electronic funds network, Montvale, N.J., to allow Canadians holding Interac cards to use their cards at all NYCE-linked merchants in the U.S. will switch on next month. The program, dubbed “Cross Border Debit,” is the first extension …

Canada's five major banks next spring will roll out a service that will allow consumers to pay for goods and services on the Internet with debit cards linked to personal identification numbers. The service, called iDebit, has been at least 18 months in the making and is expected to be …