10 Tipping Points for the Payments Industry Part 7 Bubbling like a witch's cauldron in the heart of the electronic payments industry's turmoil over signature cards is the strange and self-destructive contention between the two primary ways of getting funds out of your checking accounts with a bank card. Banks …

A sweepingly ambitious, nearly year-long effort to speed up end-to-end electronic processing of checks has been shut down by its organizers, the victim of multiple operational complications that proved in the end too hard to overcome. The Check-ACH Coalition, a group of some 65 financial institutions, trade groups, and vendors, …

Prepaid debit cards linked to tax-advantaged employee flexible-spending accounts (FSAs) for medical expenses have been growing quickly in recent years, but they got a big boost this week when leading retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it had implemented technology that will spare the customer from sorting FSA-qualifying items from ineligible …

It's early yet, but both daily transactions and average order value have been rising for payments accepted by TigerDirect Inc.'s Web site through online payment system SECURE-eBill, says Marwan Forzley, the chief executive of Ottawa-based MODASolutions, which markets the system to online merchants. TigerDirect, a Miami-based merchant that sells electronics …

The latest U.S. trial of contactless payment involving mobile phones and near-field communication technology (NFC), set to begin Jan. 10 in New York City, will combine key elements of the two other U.S. pilots mounted so far, and represents the first in which users can access credit cards issued by …

Hoping to push up compliance with its data-security rules, Visa USA on Tuesday announced first-ever incentives?including cash payments–to go along with new penalties for acquiring banks that serve the 1,200 largest Visa-accepting merchants. The carrot-and-stick package, intended to get acquirers to bring more merchants into compliance with the Payment Card …

Google Inc.'s decision to extend Checkout's offer of free processing to the end of 2007, which it announced Wednesday, could help the 6-month-old online payments service attract more merchants at a time when it's not only up against heavy-duty competition, but also facing skepticism from some online sellers. The new …

Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services LLC payment network on Tuesday announced its certification of a contactless card reader from On Track Innovations Ltd., Discover's second such announcement in three months. But Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover still hasn't revealed its larger contactless plans. “There's nothing we can talk about right now,” a …

The concept of an ATM that also serves as a kiosk for bill payment and other financial services may be getting closer to reality. TIO Networks Inc., a Burnaby, B.C.-based operator of bill-payment kiosks that serve primarily the underbanked, will begin deploying hybrid ATM-kiosk machines by the start of 2007, …

In a move aimed at addressing widespread fears about e-commerce security, MagTek Inc. has launched a company to commercialize its card-based authentication technology and leverage it for both online and point-of-sale transactions. Magensa LLC, a subsidiary of the Carson, Calif., maker of check scanners and card-terminal components, officially began operation …