In a sign of how the problem of identity fraud is spawning new businesses, a La Jolla, Calif.-based startup announced on Tuesday a free service allowing consumers to determine which pieces of junk mail they want to stop receiving. Once consumers use ProQuo Inc.'s Web site to indicate their preferences?which …

Evidence emerged again this week that Web-site breakdowns are causing more broken transactions online than e-commerce managers might suspect. Indeed, the proportion of consumers who report having had a problem completing an online transaction has remained little changed over the past three years at around 90%, while the fraction that …

Data Insecurity Part 3 For as long as we've had threats to transacting online, there's been a data-security industry poised with a vast array of solutions to protect us, anxiously awaiting evidence of a compelling business case to get things started. But for just as long, it's been axiomatic that …

Consumers' willingness to pay credit card bills online is rising rapidly, with 524 million transactions in 2006, a 27% jump over 414 million payments in 2005, according to survey data from comScore Inc. The most recent online payment volume, which represents payments consumers make at card issuers' Web sites, is …

Just as banks are starting to jump back into the mobile-banking market, a research report has emerged to indicate consumers may still not be ready to use their handsets for transaction services. Only 8% of online users who own a cell phone say they are interested in using the device …

As card data breaches continue to garner headlines, retailers may suffer the most in the eyes of U.S. consumers. Some 63% of consumers say merchants do the least to protect credit and debit card information, compared with 16% who say this about transaction processors and 5% who say Visa and …

In what may mark the first time either side in the long-running dispute between merchants and card companies over interchange pricing has tried to measure public opinion on the matter, a merchant lobbying group this week released a survey indicating 94% of consumers agree that card networks should be required …

Digital content like video, games, and music delivered as part of cell-phone subscriber plans may be getting plenty of attention these days, but it's turning out to be a harder sell than many mobile-commerce enthusiasts had thought. Some 72.5% of respondents in a survey of more than 2,500 U.S. wireless …

The wild popularity of song downloads has not only helped make a case for micropayments processing, it has drawn wireless carriers into the market with the idea that consumers will pay significantly more than the standard online rate of 99 cents per track for the convenience of loading songs over …

The willingness of U.S. consumers to use credit or debit cards to buy things like cups of coffee or cans of soda is rising fast, according to a survey being released this week at a conference in New York on micropayments, or transactions for less than $5. Some 21% of …