A small technology company that has made a name for itself with its aggressive and successful litigation defending a pair of patents covering check imaging was dealt a setback late last week when the United States Patent and Trademark Office rejected all of the claims set out in those patents. …

Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services LLC payment network on Tuesday announced its certification of a contactless card reader from On Track Innovations Ltd., Discover's second such announcement in three months. But Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover still hasn't revealed its larger contactless plans. “There's nothing we can talk about right now,” a …

A new electronic check-conversion application set to go live in March at retail and other check-accepting businesses could become one of the fastest-growing products ever introduced for the automated clearing house (ACH) network, generating 425 million transactions in 2007, predicts a new study from Boston-based market researcher Celent LLC. The …

U.S. Bancorp reported this week that it would start testing Visa Contactless credit cards by the end of the month in the Denver area. The test will involve an undisclosed number of cardholders who would be able to use the cards equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips at about 600 …

The concept of an ATM that also serves as a kiosk for bill payment and other financial services may be getting closer to reality. TIO Networks Inc., a Burnaby, B.C.-based operator of bill-payment kiosks that serve primarily the underbanked, will begin deploying hybrid ATM-kiosk machines by the start of 2007, …

Visa USA will test text messages as a way to deliver coupons and discounts to employees at its corporate campus in Foster City. The 12-week test, which does not involve payment technology, is a precursor to broader tests of text messaging that may be linked to payments. The test with …

The links between the growing payment sectors of prepaid cards and online banking just got a little tighter with the creation by Online Resources Corp. of a new service that lets consumers buy private-label gift cards through their financial institutions' online banking and bill-payment sites. The service, called CardHQ, currently …

Processor Metavante Corp. has come up with a seemingly natural but rare pairing of two booming payment niches: payroll cards and electronic bill payments. A major provider of both services to financial institutions, Milwaukee-based Metavante this week introduced what it calls Metavante Prepaid Bill Payment. The service makes Internet-based bill …

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s decision to accept MasterCard Worldwide credit cards?but not credit cards from Visa USA–at its 500-plus Sam's Club stores stems from competitive forces in the warehouse retailing business, but may also signal the beginning of the end of uniformity of merchant acceptance of the two bank card brands. …

Checks cleared as electronic images continue to account for an increasing share of all image-based check traffic, even as an industry group works to hammer out a new system to accelerate the conversion to all-electronic check processing. Indeed, The Image Payments Network, an image-exchange network operated by The Clearing House …