It has been an eventful week for American Express Co. Today the company announced that Woonsocket, R.I.-based drugstore chain CVS Corp. has agreed to serve as the first national merchant to accept ExpressPay, an AmEx system that relies on radio waves rather than card swipes to authorize transactions. This news …

Two rival online payment companies in Canada are making moves to expand the market for Web-based debit payments to the U.S. Toronto-based UseMyBank Services Inc. has linked with processors in both Europe and the U.S., while Othentik Technologies Inc., Montreal, has signed a deal to license its software to US …

Paradata Systems Inc. is getting set to build up its market share in Internet-based transaction processing in the U.S. To that end, it has added two U.S.-based transaction-processing veterans to its board and is starting to seek out larger independent sales organizations and other resellers to more rapidly expand its …

There are 25 million people in the U.S. who have a regular income but don't have a bank account, says Vero Financial Group, Lake Oswego, Ore., and now the 2-year-old company has developed a card-based, biometric system to cash checks for this market that cuts transaction time and cost while …

Recent survey statistics document a continuing rise in both phishing sites and attacks, and underline the toll such security problems are taking on consumer confidence when conducting online transactions. In its latest report, the Anti-Phishing Working Group says the number of unique Web sites engaged in phishing fraud jumped to …

American Express Co. Inc.'s decision to include eight banks as defendants in the lawsuit it filed earlier this week against Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc. may be a power play to weaken the bank card networks by widening policy differences between the networks and their major members, some …

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 …

Discover Financial Service's Inc.'s proposed acquisition of the Pulse EFT network, announced yesterday (Digital Transactions News, Nov. 15), hands the Riverwoods, Ill.-based card company instant credibility in the business of PIN debit, but it also may propel Discover's efforts to break into the high-growth signature-debit card arena. Discover, apparently encouraged …

Image exchange will account for 93% of all transit checks by 2010, marginalizing what are now some highly popular forms of electronic check conversion, including the fastest-growing form of e-check, account receivable conversion (ARC), according to new projections from Celent Communications. The New York-based research firm says today's nascent image-exchange …

Visa's decision to increase its interchange rates for PIN debit transactions on its Interlink network may generate more revenue for the network's issuers but will also create more interest in competing non-bank networks catering to merchants, according to some observers. Visa yesterday released a four-page document to member banks outlining …