MasterCard International reports that 7 million of its 545 million debit cards linked to personal identification numbers worldwide are now enabled for use with SecureCode, the card network's security program for Internet transactions on credit and debit cards. Most of this activity is in Europe. MasterCard says some 5,800 Web …

America West Airlines, a unit of America West Holdings Corp., has become the first airline to adopt I4 Commerce Inc.'s Bill Me Later Internet payment system. To encourage usage of the new payment option, the Phoenix-based air carrier is offering deferred billing for 90 days or more to qualified customers, …

The market for wireless point-of-sale credit and debit card transactions is about to heat up. Founded in 2002, Boston-based Way Systems Inc. is introducing a point-to-point processing system that includes mobile phones equipped with card swipes, security and transaction programming, and keypads for personal identification numbers. The swipe, keypad, and …

A Hampton, Ga.-based processor that has tried for four years to bring to market a system to enable on the Internet debit card transactions linked to personal identification numbers may be close to signing an additional network for access to PIN debit accounts. Kryptosima, a unit of InstaPay Systems Inc., …

An arrangement hammered out last spring between Toronto-based Acxsys Corp. and the NYCE electronic funds network, Montvale, N.J., to allow Canadians holding Interac cards to use their cards at all NYCE-linked merchants in the U.S. will switch on next month. The program, dubbed “Cross Border Debit,” is the first extension …

Canada's five major banks next spring will roll out a service that will allow consumers to pay for goods and services on the Internet with debit cards linked to personal identification numbers. The service, called iDebit, has been at least 18 months in the making and is expected to be …

Despite widespread industry perceptions that 3D Secure technologies are rendering proxy payment numbers obsolete, the primary vendor of such single-use-number technology says its system remains highly attractive to card issuers looking for ways to encourage customers to spend on the Internet. “I feel very bullish about our product,” says Diane …

The arrests announced yesterday by the federal government in an operation directed against e-commerce fraud is cause for optimism, but there's still plenty to keep online merchants up at night, according to a key executive who helped carry out the latest law-enforcement action. The government's Operation Websnare led to the …

John Barrett, a 16-year veteran of MCI Corp., has joined First Data Corp. to run the processor's merchant-sales operations through independent sales organizations and sales agents. In his position as senior vice president for FDC's third-party sales channel, Barrett will have responsibility for all merchant-sales efforts through third parties at …

Proposals to extend a transaction-messaging protocol based on extensible markup language (XML) to the retail point of sale are meeting some skepticism among current and former POS terminal executives. The protocol, known as interactive financial exchange (IFX), relies on the flexibility of XML, an Internet language, to simplify messaging across …