The cause of strong authentication for Web-based transactions took a major step forward today with the announcement from banking giant Bank of America Corp. that it is implementing a two-factor authentication system for its online banking service. With 13.2 million users, including 6.4 million bill payers, BofA's service is the …

Microsoft Corp. is working on new authentication software that will identify consumers to merchant sites on the Internet and initiate payment processing. The software, which the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is calling InfoCard for now, will be released to developers for feedback by the end of the month, according to …

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co.'s decision to roll out a biometric payment system to all 85 stores in its chain was driven by both transaction-cost savings and customer interest, a senior executive for the Charleston, S.C.-based grocer says. In related news, Pay By Touch, the San Francisco-based company whose system Piggly …

Recent survey statistics document a continuing rise in both phishing sites and attacks, and underline the toll such security problems are taking on consumer confidence when conducting online transactions. In its latest report, the Anti-Phishing Working Group says the number of unique Web sites engaged in phishing fraud jumped to …

VeriSign Inc. says heavy promotion it's putting behind its new trust mark for e-commerce will drive the number of payment-gateway client sites displaying the mark from 40,000 currently to more than 70,000 by year's end. And it expects that number to double by the end of 2005. The Mountain View, …

The Web site for specialty charge card issuer Diner's Club scored 100% reliability and topped a new weekly test of both reliability and response time at nine credit card Web sites. The Diner's site posted a response time of 7.03 seconds, significantly ahead of the second-place site, Capital One (8.20 …

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 …

New processing technologies for so-called micropayments–transactions carrying a value under $5–have received a lot of attention in recent months as the number of sellers of online digital content expands and as the market for song downloads explodes, but some observers now question how far the market can grow. Startups like …

Recent industry statistics paint a grim picture of how pervasive spam, and with it e-mail fraud, is becoming in the U.S. transaction economy. Brightmail Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of anti-spam software, reports that the volume of spam hit 64% of some 96 billion e-mail messages its systems filtered in …

Digency Inc. is within a month of signing its first clients for tests of a new system it has developed that fights e-commerce fraud by pinpointing Web users' geographic location, according to Ed R. Starrs, chief executive of the El Dorado Hills, Calif.-based e-commerce processor. Dubbed “Geocate,” the product has …