Purchase volume on MasterCard International credit and signature-based debit cards in the U.S. grew almost 8% in the third quarter, to $132.9 billion, the bank card company reported today. MasterCard credit cards registered growth of 6.9%, to $109.7 billion, well below worldwide growth of 11.2%. On the signature debit side, …

The automated clearing house is handling more electronic transactions than ever, though growth in its electronic check category is showing signs of cooling off. The National Automated Clearing House Association reports the ACH network interchanged almost 2.1 billion transactions among financial institutions overall in the third quarter, the first time …

In an effort to make amends to sellers that were affected by its recent service outage, PayPal Inc. will credit all seller transaction fees incurred between 12 a.m. and midnight Pacific time tomorrow. Accounts eligible to receive the credits, which PayPal will distribute by Nov. 25, are premier and business …

PayPal Inc. may have made headlines last week with its intermittent outages, but third-quarter numbers released this week by its parent company, Internet auction kingpin eBay Inc., show the online payments processor racking up significant growth in accounts, transactions, and dollar volume, while continuing to chop fraud losses. San Jose, …

Evolution Benefits Inc. and 1-800 Contacts Inc. have reached an agreement under which the retailer of replacement contact lenses will accept Evolution Benefits' Benny debit card. The card, cobranded with MasterCard and Visa, will tap flexible-spending and health-reimbursement accounts set up by corporate employees, which the employees have funded with …

As the PayPal Inc. online payment service returned to normal yesterday, its technical problems of the past several days have raised the specter in some circles of the company's non-bank status. Some observers, particularly bankers, have long argued that as a non-bank financial entity, PayPal is not bound by many …

MasterCard International announced today it will launch pilots of its PayPass electronic payment system on mobile phones from Motorola Inc. The Purchase, N.Y.-based card company says the pilots will get under way at a “variety” of unspecified locations in the U.S by the end of the year. The Motorola phones …

A new proposal that would require banks that originate unauthorized automated clearing house transactions to pay fees to receiving banks went out to ACH members for comment this week, but not without controversy. “This is by far the most polarizing topic the ACH industry has seen in a long time,” …

Albertson's Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based chain of supermarkets, will install and test a biometric-based system to authenticate electronic transactions by the end of the first quarter next year. The system, which relies on mathematically derived templates of consumers' fingerprints, comes from San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, which has been aggressively …

With the effective date for the Check Clearing for the 21st Century (Check 21) Act only 22 days away, few electronic payments observers doubt that the efficiencies of check imaging and image exchange will benefit banks. A lingering question, though, has been how much it will benefit retailers who accept …