E-commerce sales increases outpaced those at brick-and-mortar merchants during the 2007 holiday shopping season (Digital Transactions News, Jan. 14), and that strong growth along with the recruitment of new online merchants gave a fourth-quarter lift to Internet transaction processor PayPal Inc. The San Jose, Calif.-based company handled 203.9 million transactions …

U.S. Bancorp's Nova Information Services Inc. merchant-acquiring subsidiary is diving headfirst into the increasingly competitive payment-gateway business with its pending acquisition of Southern DataComm Inc., a gateway with a big presence in the hospitality sector. Largo, Fla.-based Southern DataComm handles an estimated $50 billion-plus in annualized payment volume, according to …

Having introduced a new processing platform to ease integration with payment software and hardware products, Global Payments Inc. on Wednesday announced it will work with NitroSell, a supplier of shopping-cart software, to allow NitroSell's merchants to process e-commerce transactions on the new system. Atlanta-based Global Payments last week announced it …

The trend toward acceptance of so-called alternative-payment products by online merchants is going strong and will likely continue for some time, driven largely by incentives for merchants and consumers alike and by ease of use, says Adam Cohen, principal at Brulant Inc., an interactive advertising agency in Cleveland. “I would …

While 2007-08 holiday-season spending overall fell short of expectations, e-commerce sales soared, according to final numbers compiled by Dallas-based processor Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC. Ten online merchants for which Chase Paymentech processes transactions saw their total traffic jump 29% for the season, to 108.4 million transactions. Dollar volume grew at …

Fledgling mobile-payments processor Mocapay Inc., which has been handling transactions for about 200 merchants in the Boulder, Colo, and Cincinnati areas, plans to launch a national rollout of its service this spring, the company's chief marketing officer tells Digital Transactions News. The 2-year-old company plans to complete work on its …

Introduced only last March, the back-office conversion (BOC) e-check application is poised for a big year in 2008, according to a check-services vendor that is processing more than one-third of all BOC volume. “We think there's going to be big growth for BOC in 2008, and we're going to be …

A European Commission ruling that MasterCard Worldwide's interchange-fee structure is illegal in that region will affect relatively few transactions in Europe but could encourage regulators?including those in the U.S.?to act on interchange, among other bleak implications for bank and network executives. “On balance, the EC decision is negative,” says Eric …

A day-after-Christmas processing glitch at First Data Corp.'s ValueLink unit, a processor of prepaid card transactions, delayed gift card authorizations at some stores belonging to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other, unnamed merchants. While statements released by both Wal-Mart and First Data indicate the problem was fixed Wednesday, the snafu couldn't …

While holiday-season shopping activity overall for 2007 may have seen only a lukewarm increase compared to last year, purchases online surged ahead, reaching their peak a week before Christmas. On Dec. 18, online sales for 10 of the 30 largest e-commerce merchants hit $169 million on more than 3 million …