The first order of business for the new Washington, D.C.-based merchant group formed earlier this year to lobby for regulation of card-interchange rates is to inform consumers and their representatives about the costs they incur because of interchange, says Mallory Duncan, chairman of the Merchants Payments Coalition. “Consumers don't appreciate …

Eyeing what it sees as a huge opportunity in processing bill payments, U.K.-based Retail Decisions PLC's U.S. processing unit this month will begin offering the fastest-growing form of electronic check now available: accounts-receivable conversion, or ARC. Retail Decisions USA Inc., which has built its business providing a card-based risk-management and …

A proposal to impose an estimated $17 per-transaction fee on banks that enter automated clearing house transactions on behalf of payees for items returned as unauthorized has been rejected by the membership of NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting body for the ACH. According to a notice NACHA sent to its …

Efunds Corp. signaled its intention to move aggressively into the burgeoning market for prepaid products today with an announcement that it is buying WildCard Systems Inc., a Sunrise, Fla.-based processor, for $228.8 million in cash. The deal, which is expected to close early next month, will add prepaid debit to …

CheckFree Corp. will begin piloting PIN-based debit transactions in its extensive walk-in bill-payment network before the end of the year. The Atlanta-based processor is also investigating the possibility of adding a PIN-less debit feature to its online and telephone-based bill-payment network for so-called biller-direct transactions, though it has no definite …

Contactless payment technology picked up momentum with yesterday's news that 7-Eleven Inc. is adopting the technology chainwide and that Sheetz Inc. has completed installations at all 309 of its stores. And, contrary to some observers' argument that contactless payment will be held back by the absence of special breaks on …

Mother's Day-related spending on jewelry and chocolates on the Internet drove a 24% increase in e-commerce volume for VeriSign Inc., to $4.4 billion, the Mountain View, Calif.-based transaction gateway for online merchants said today. Transaction volume for the company during the period measured, April 25 through May 8, jumped by …

Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization iPayment Inc. today reported its revenues and processed charge volume more than doubled in the first quarter compared to the year-ago period, with much of the growth driven by a December acquisition of a merchant portfolio from First Data Merchant Services. In a conference call …

After a slowdown in February, the number of Web sites engaged in phishing frauds increased at a faster clip in March, reaching 2,870, according to data released by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an organization of software firms, payment companies, and law-enforcement agencies that tracks the online fraud. The 6.9% increase …

A Washington, D.C.-based organization formed early this year by retail-industry trade groups says it is beginning to work out a plan of attack that it hopes will lead to regulation of the fees card-accepting merchants pay issuing banks. After years of friction between banks and merchants over the subject, this …