The process that led to Metavante Corp.'s pending spin-off from Milwaukee-based bank-holding company Marshall & Ilsley Corp. started two years ago as the payment processor sought ways to continue making acquisitions, according to a registration statement M&I filed this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing?775 pages in …

MODASolutions Inc. which has been marketing an online-payment system called SECURE-eBill for more than two years, has renamed the service and introduced its first buyer-protection policy to cover instances of delayed or damaged goods, as well as non-delivery. The new policy comes as online retailers seek alternatives to bank-issued credit …

Private-equity financing continued to make itself felt this week in the transaction-processing business, with Blackstone Capital Partners VLP's $7.8 billion bid for Alliance Data Systems Corp. and GTCR Golder Rauner LLC's decision to sell TransFirst LLC to an even bigger investment house, Welsh, Carson, Anderson, & Stowe, for $683 million. …

In the battle against the online fraud known as phishing, March brought a mix of good news and bad, with dramatic drops in malicious software offset by a steep rise in targeted brands, according to the latest report from an organization that tracks the fraud. Separately, the U.S. Commerce Department …

Two milestones announced this week indicate the rapidly growing adoption of image exchange for check processing. SVPCO, which handles paper checks and runs an image exchange network as part of the New York-based The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, announced on Tuesday that imaged items exceeded paper checks in both …

Prepaid card processor eCommLink Inc. is joining with mobile phone and payment technology providers to offer a cell phone and prepaid debit MasterCard tied to a single account. The prepaid MasterCard function eventually will be incorporated into the phone, enabling consumers to use the phone for payments at merchants' points …

Processor eFunds Corp. today gave further momentum to a financial transformation of the transaction-processing business by announcing that it has hired investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co. to explore what it calls “strategic alternatives” that could result in a merger. The eFunds disclosure comes just over a month after announcements …

The back-office conversion e-check code has been live for nearly two months now, and, as many predicted with its March 16 debut, it came in like a lamb. There have been few, if any, high-profile product launches or other splashy events associated with the new automated clearing house payment option. …

Total image-exchange volume quintupled in the 12 months through March, while the percentage of items clearing at paying banks as images rather than as paper substitute checks grew to 64% from 36%, according to the most recent statistics compiled by the Electronic Check Clearing House Organization. In a further sign …

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that appears to rein in the ability of certain technology patent holders to press their claims against alleged infringers is likely to have little or no impact on what has been a highly effective enforcement campaign by a company that holds patents bearing on check …