Debit card transactions authenticated by a biometric scan rather than a PIN will likely start flowing through at least one electronic funds transfer network by the second quarter of 2006, according to Pay By Touch Solutions, a San Francisco-based supplier of fingerprint-authentication systems for point-of-sale electronic payment. Eric Bachman, chief …

An integrated device that would allow plumbers, maid services, pizza-delivery people, and other mobile merchants to perform electronic check conversion as well as accept cards will be commercially available by the end of the first quarter of 2006, according to Commerciant LP, the Houston-based company that makes the terminal. The …

Two bitter rivals in the biometric-payments arena have merged to helped spur adoption of the technology among merchants. Tim Robinson, chief executive of BioPay LLC, which will shortly become part of its largest competitor, Pay By Touch Solutions, as the result of a deal announced today, says the longstanding rivalry …

The willingness of U.S. consumers to use credit or debit cards to buy things like cups of coffee or cans of soda is rising fast, according to a survey being released this week at a conference in New York on micropayments, or transactions for less than $5. Some 21% of …

In a move that could herald a thrust into the rapidly growing point-of-sale stored-value payments market, PayPal Inc. is processing prepaid accounts behind cafeteria payments for its own employees as well as for those of two other technology companies in Silicon Valley. For the past year, the online-payments processor, a …

Both transaction volume and site performance overall gave online merchants reasons to smile in the weekend leading up to “Cyber Monday,” the day experts say is the busiest shopping day of the year online. Merchants appear to have souped up their servers to meet increasing traffic, as well as rising …

The banks that own MasterCard Inc. cleared the way today for the bank card network to offer stock to the public and to reconstitute its governing board. By an overwhelming margin in a special meeting of shareholders, MasterCard’s shareholders approved the company’s proposal for an initial public offering that will …

This may be the year contactless payment gained a foothold among banks and merchants, but another technology?biometrically secured point-of-sale payments?is starting to gain momentum, as well. BioPay LLC, a provider of the technology for both POS transactions and payroll check-cashing, says it expects in 2006 to double, and possibly triple, …

The U.S. cash-payment market is enormous, but banks' hopes of penetrating it with so-called contactless technology could falter if high acceptance costs spur merchants to look at alternative electronic payment methods. That's one among a number of findings in a new study released this week on the market for transactions …

U.S. e-commerce sales totaled $22.3 billion in the third quarter, up 26.7% from the year-ago period, according to statistics released today by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Transactions on the Internet now account for 2.3% of all U.S. retail sales, according to the latest figures, the highest share yet for …