Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Electronic transactions using unique numerical identifiers to mask account and routing data are rising fast, and now the company behind the technology expects it will be commercially available for consumer payments in about a year. The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC says corporate users made 80,459 transactions in 2006 using …

Rejected by many retailers, the point-of-purchase electronic-check code has one fan that really counts: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer. Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart expects the last 300 of its approximately 3,400 U.S. Wal-Mart locations to go live with the automated clearing house payment option next Monday. Wal-Mart's push behind …

Merchant processor Electronic Clearing House Inc. and accounting-software giant Intuit Inc. on Tuesday announced that their planned $142 million merger is off. ECHO chairman and chief executive Joel M. Barry laid much of the blame on a federal investigation into Internet gambling that will involve a $2.3 million settlement from …

Proposals to print originators' names on statements and to make compliance audits hinge on the kind of transactions banks are originating are set to follow a current proposal from NACHA-The Electronic Payments Association to increase penalties for unauthorized transactions on the automated clearing house network, according to a NACHA official. …

The automated clearing house's point-of-purchase electronic-check code in 2006's fourth quarter once again posted the highest growth rate among the various e-check codes, but the new back-office conversion (BOC) application that went live March 16 could soon claim POP's place in the sun. According to new data from Herndon, Va.-based …

Today, the much-heralded back-office conversion electronic-check code goes live on the automated clearing house network. But rather than throw a huge birthday party, executives of the ACH's governing body, NACHA?The Electronic Payments Association, and banks are marking BOC's debut in a decidedly low-key manner. BOC will allow retailers and other …

A survey released this week by a major trade association for corporate treasury officials raises an alarm about fraud in check and electronic payments and points to vulnerabilities in newer transaction channels, such as the Internet. “Payments fraud last year was pervasive and increasing,” says a report from the Association …

10 Tipping Points for the Payments Industry Part 7 Bubbling like a witch's cauldron in the heart of the electronic payments industry's turmoil over signature cards is the strange and self-destructive contention between the two primary ways of getting funds out of your checking accounts with a bank card. Banks …

A new point-of-sale payment option that converts checks to electronic debits, available starting next month, will open the retailer market for remote deposit capture, a leading payments executive says. The new option, called back-office conversion (BOC), allows merchants to scan consumer checks in bulk and process them through the automated …

NACHA announced Monday it has begun levying two new so-called network administration fees. One fee, a flat charge of one-one-hundredth of a penny, applies to all transactions passing through the automated clearing house system, except those considered on-us, or handled within a single financial institution. The Herndon, Va.-based governing body …

A sweepingly ambitious, nearly year-long effort to speed up end-to-end electronic processing of checks has been shut down by its organizers, the victim of multiple operational complications that proved in the end too hard to overcome. The Check-ACH Coalition, a group of some 65 financial institutions, trade groups, and vendors, …

CheckFree Corp.'s agreement to buy Dallas-based banking-software vendor Carreker Corp., announced Tuesday, will help extend the bill-payment processor's reach into the business of electronic check image exchange, including the fast-growing remote capture market. It could also position CheckFree to exploit opportunities arising from the possible convergence of the automated clearing …

The formerly somnolent point-of-purchase (POP) electronic-check code continued on its newfound burst of energy in the third quarter, according to the latest automated clearing house volume report from NACHA?The Electronic Payments Association. NACHA reports POP volume hit 80.5 million transactions, up 92.8% from 41.8 million in the year-earlier quarter. POP's …

Mutual need brought Electronic Clearing House Inc. (ECHO) and Intuit Inc. together in the $142 million deal, announced last week, that will make Camarillo, Calif-based processor ECHO part of Intuit, Mountain View, Calif., some time in the first quarter (Digital Transactions News, Dec. 15). Intuit, marketer of the popular QuickBooks …

Online payments processor ClickandBuy this week announced what it calls “Version 2.0” of its digital-content platform, which includes an electronic wallet, long-awaited billing through two major U.S. phone companies, lower merchant pricing, and a new name, to boot. Parent company Firstgate Internet AG of Zug, Switzerland, has chucked the ampersand …

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 …

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 …

Check processor Solutran Inc. thinks it has found a way to make the new back-office conversion (BOC) e-check code more attractive to merchants: take the costly scanning process out the back office and outsource it. Plymouth, Minn.-based Solutran recently announced its SPIN service, for Solutran POS and Imaging Network. The …

A banking group that is exploring how to merge electronic image exchange with the automated clearing house network expects to distribute a survey on Tuesday to financial institutions seeking to find out what their plans are for image exchange and what barriers are slowing down their movement toward receiving and …

It's not yet four months old, but already Google Inc.'s Checkout Internet payment service is making an impact, with 7% of online retailers surveyed in recent weeks by CyberSource Corp. having adopted it. That compares with 35% for PayPal, 24% for e-checks and other automated clearing house debits, and 16% …