The U.S. person-to-person payments business, including P2P payments on cell phones, attracted yet another entrant with the announcement Tuesday by BankServ Inc. that it had acquired the managed-payments platform of Magex Holdings Ltd., a U.K. company, for an undisclosed sum. In the deal, San Francisco-based BankServ, a 10-year-old private company …

Think of electronic bill payments and, not surprisingly, the Internet usually comes to mind first. But many billers, especially banks, have yet to offer bill payments through telephone-based customer-service systems or automated interactive voice-response units, experts tell Digital Transactions magazine in an upcoming story on expedited bill payments. The Web's …

Small banks are adopting electronic-payments technologies at a rate that rivals, and in some cases exceeds, that of their larger competitors, according to a survey released this week. Two-thirds of the nation's community banks are processing checks under the rules of the Check Clearing Act for the 21st Century (Check …

The number of consumers who use biller Web sites to pay their bills continues to outpace the number who use bank sites, but the latter users are more active transactors, according to recent survey and online-tracking research from comScore Networks Inc. Overall, the online bill-pay market grew 36% in 2005, …

Processors of stored-value transactions are noting a new development that's driving growth in payroll cards, perhaps the hottest prepaid card market: Increasingly, employers are issuing them to workers with checking accounts and other established banking relationships, according to an article set to appear in the May issue of Digital Transactions …

Online-banking-software provider Corillian Corp. is planning to sell banks on housing their own bill-payment data and using a variety of processors, rather than relying on those processors as exclusive providers of data-warehousing and transaction processing. Hillsboro, Ore.-based Corillian, which earlier this year acquired InteliData Technologies Corp., a vendor of data-warehousing …

United Bank Card Inc. is introducing two new weekly-payout bonus programs for independent sales organizations and increasing payment frequency on a third incentive program to weekly, as well. The Hampton, N.J.-based acquiring processor says it has begun paying an incremental $30 to $40 to ISOs and sales agents for each …

Deploring the extent to which banks have turned over key functions in consumer payments to non-bank companies, a leading figure in the payments industry on Thursday called on banks to “seize back” leadership in the industry. In a keynote address delivered at the Bank Administration Institute's TransPay trade show in …

Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization iPayment Inc. expects on Wednesday to close on its $55 million cash acquisition of an agent-bank portfolio from First Data Corp. The portfolio consists of 18,000 small merchant accounts controlled by 170 agent banks and generating about $4 billion in annual card volume. First Data …

The Electronic Payments Coalition late Wednesday filed an Amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act. The lawsuit, brought by Illinois Bankers Association, Illinois Credit Union League, American Bankers Association, and America’s Credit Unions and filed last month in the United …