By John Stewart As participants in the 40-year-old automated clearing house network get ready to implement same-day clearing capability, network growth continues to percolate, according to the latest numbers from NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based rules-setting organization for the ACH. Transactions totaled 4.72 billion in the first quarter, an increase of …

It’s more critical than ever that online merchants leverage payments to satisfy shoppers’ expectations. From the checkout experience to social media, here’s a quintet of ways to make that happen. Holiday sales hit a record high this past season, when Americans spent $53.3 billion online, according to a recent study …

In the last 10 years, the electronic movement of money has become easier than ever. More people are banking online, paying bills electronically, and making payments with their mobile devices. In fact, one-quarter of all smart-phone users have made a mobile payment in the last 12 months, and half of …

  Seemingly shunned by traditional lenders during the Great Recession a few years ago, small merchants turned to alternative financing to buy inventory and equipment. It’s a trend that shows few signs of dissipating. PayPal Inc. this week said it had lent $500 million in the first 18 months of …

On the heels of healthy quarterly growth, NACHA reported Thursday that the automated clearing house network handled nearly 23 billion electronic transactions in 2014, up by 1 billion payments, or nearly 5%, from 2013. Dollar volume was up more than 3%, to more than $40 trillion. These overall volume numbers …

Right now, all eyes are on the next six months.  But what about after the liability shift?  What happens then? Whether or not any particular merchant is ready for EMV by Oct. 1, payments executives are figuring on two things as pretty much sure bets after that date. One is …

Funding for small businesses has been an increasingly important source of revenue for independent sales organizations and other merchant acquirers, but they’re not the only parties that have noticed the market’s lucrative potential. Now, banking-technology vendors and even large merchants are getting into the game. Jack Henry & Associates Inc., …

The PCI Security Standards Council issued a bulletin Friday saying that no version of the Secure Socket Layers (SSL) protocol for protecting Internet communications meets its definition of strong cryptography. Accordingly, the Council said it will soon revise versions 3.0 of its main Payment Card Security data-security standard and the …

More evidence emerged in recent days to document the surging rise of mobile payments worldwide. For the first time, mobile transactions account for more than 25% of all global online traffic on the Adyen platform, the company said while releasing its quarterly Mobile Payments Index last week with statistics on the …

Security Notes When we detect air pollution, is the treatment of asthma our first line of defense? When our water supply is contaminated, is it our best answer to boil our water? It is difficult to keep our air and water clean, but that’s our strategic aim, meeting the threat …