Albertson's Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based chain of supermarkets, will install and test a biometric-based system to authenticate electronic transactions by the end of the first quarter next year. The system, which relies on mathematically derived templates of consumers' fingerprints, comes from San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, which has been aggressively …

The number of Americans ages 12 and up who bought sub-$2 digital content online in the past year has ballooned to more than 14 million, up from 4 million a year ago, according to a survey released today. “The data suggest that the online micropayments market has grown significantly in …

PayPal Inc. is in the midst of rolling out its first marketing campaign to sign up non-eBay merchants for its online payment service. Dubbed “PayPal for Business” and aimed at what PayPal considers small and medium-size Internet merchants, the campaign features a telemarketing effort, a direct-mail blast, and a new, …

Although Internet transactions have become a highly popular form of payment on the automated clearing house network, the emergence of direct debit online may stunt the growth of Web ACH transactions, an executive with a major Internet payment processor said today. Internet payments, which the National Automated Clearing House Association …

MasterCard International expects to bring thousands of new Internet merchants into its SecureCode transaction security program by the middle of next month. The new merchant signings will result from a major push the card network is making for SecureCode among large, well-know online retailers as well as among Web hosting …

Dexit Inc., a Toronto-based processor of stored-value transactions using radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, is expanding nationally in Canada and will begin processing transactions in other parts of the world next year?but not in the U.S. any time soon. Dexit, which allows consumers to use chip-embedded keychain “tags” to tap accounts …

A network built by New York-based Small Value Payments Co. (SVPCo.) to allow banks to exchange check images has begun operations with exchanges between KeyBank and J.P. Morgan Chase. The network began with volume at a “controlled” level to allow each bank to test operations, according to an announcement from …

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 …

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 …

PayPal isn't likely to be the last new payment channel Retail Decisions USA Inc. adds to its transaction products for online merchants. The Hazlet, New Jersey-based unit of Retail Decisions PLC in the U.K. announced earlier this month it was adding PayPal acceptance to its transaction-processing software, LiveProcessor, and its …