With an increasing number of consumers checking credit card statements and paying bills online at credit card issuers' Web sites, Keynote Systems Inc., San Mateo, Calif., announced it will begin measuring the speed and reliability of nine sites as part of a benchmarking index. The company, which specializes in measuring …

Defenders of interchange for electronic credit and debit transactions argue merchants are losing sight of the value interchange pays for. The subject of interchange has become hotly contested in the wake of lawsuits by retailers challenging it or aspects of it, and following recent interchange hikes by the bank card …

Competition in the nascent market for micropayments, or transactions of $5 or less, is about to become even more heated. A 10-year-old maker of e-commerce systems for retailers says it is 30 to 45 days away from introducing a micropayments product that will be tied to prepaid consumer accounts and …

The Internet scam known as phishing continued to grow in June, jumping 19% from May to 1,422 unique attacks, according to The Anti-Phishing Working Group, which tracks the fraud. Attacks have increased at an average monthly rate of 52% since the group began keeping statistics last fall. For the third …

Visa U.S.A.'s consumer authentication system for Internet transactions, Verified by Visa, will see its merchant base expand by 50% in the next few days as online-shopping aggregator 2checkout.com switches on 10,000 Web retailers for the service. It's a significant lift for VbyV, and represents the first fruits of a new …

A Boston-based mobile-transaction processor that has signed up a local taxicab company and a number of other merchants is hoping this week's Democratic National Convention will help propel the fledgling service into national prominence. Vayusa Inc., which offers the cell-phone-based service under the name MobileLime, has recruited 50 merchant locations …

Worldwide discount-fee income jumped 18% for American Express Co. on sharply higher cardholder spending in the second quarter, though the card network's average discount rate drifted slightly downward. The company's U.S. card billings hit $75.7 billion in the quarter, a 17% increase over the year-ago period. Even faster card spending …

Arthur Blank & Co. Inc., a Boston-based maker of plastic payment and loyalty cards, is getting into the market for cards equipped with radio-frequency-identification technology, with ambitions particularly for cards supporting loyalty programs and payments in the quick-service retail market. “We as a company are very bullish [on RFID],” says …

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co., a Charleston, S.C.-based supermarket chain, today switched on an in-lane biometric payment system in four stores on the way to a planned rollout of the fingerprint authentication system to all 116 stores in the chain. The system, from San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, allows customers to …

The recent surge in transactions in the category of electronic checks called accounts-receivable conversion (ARC) comes as no surprise to the banks that are playing a major role in moving utilities, insurers, retailers, credit card companies, and other major consumer billers from paper checks to electronic transactions on the automated …