The legal battle over the bank card associations' interchange pricing arrangements, already red-hot, got even hotter today when four retail trade associations slapped Visa U.S.A., MasterCard International, and several major banks with a class-action antitrust suit. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New …

CyberSource Corp.'s deal to acquire the assets of CardSystems Inc. would hand the Mountain View, Calif.-based transaction-gateway provider a major sales channel for both card-present and Web-based payment processing, catapulting the company squarely into the ranks of processors for small and mid-sized multi-channel merchants, according to observers. The move also …

The rising interest among banks and Internet merchants in more robust methods to verify that online customers are who they say they are is helping drive business for a form of such verification known as knowledge-based authentication. Verid Inc., a 6-year-old supplier of KBA processing services, says its transaction volume, …

Metris Cos. Inc. announced today it will begin issuing cards on Discover Financial Services LLC.'s acceptance network by the end of the year. Metris, the nation's 11th-largest issuer of bank cards, said it will issue a new credit card under the Discover banner through its Direct Merchants Credit Card Bank …

Reporting rapid growth for its payment service and rising interest in a new marketing and finance platform it rolled out last month, I4 Commerce Inc. says it will begin next year expanding into new payment channels, with debit and stored-value ranking as distinct possibilities. The company will end the year …

GreenZap Inc., a San Diego, Calif.-based processor of e-mail payments that started up this summer as the latest competitor to PayPal Inc., has added acceptance of Visa and MasterCard cards to fund accounts, a move the company says will help it to more than double transaction volume. “The integration of …

After five years of development, Boca Raton, Fla.-based startup ECOM Financial Corp. is planning to introduce an anonymous, disposable prepaid card that will clear transactions through the MasterCard network and be usable for purchases on the Internet as well as at the point of sale. The company, which says it …

HSBC Bank USA N.A. has become the third U.S. bank to add contactless payment technology to its debit cards. The bank said today it has begun issuing MasterCard-branded debit cards equipped with MasterCard's PayPass system, and plans to issue 1 million of the cards by the end of the year. …

PayPal Inc.'s decision to enter the broad micropayments market could help the Internet payments processor boost transaction volumes and attract new accountholders, but by how much is currently a guessing game, experts say. “I'm not educated enough yet to say whether it's going to be material,” says Gwenn Bezard, research …

MasterCard International said today it will appeal a decision from the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading that concluded the bank card network's method of setting interchange was anti-competitive. Meanwhile, a trade group representing British merchants said it was disappointed in the OFT ruling and may also appeal. The U.K. regulator …