Fearing that security worries could hinder mobile payments and other digital-payments channels, a handful of major banks are building a server-based switch that will mask consumers’ banking information when they perform transactions. Tentatively called Secure Cloud, the so-called thin switch is under construction at The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, …

The slow death of paper checks showed up again in the latest quarterly statistics from NACHA, the regulatory body for the automated clearing house network. The ACH, which links virtually every financial institution in the country, allows banks and merchants to convert checks into electronic formats. But transaction volume on …

PayPal Inc. this week struck a deal that offers the San Jose, Calif.-based processor the potential to reach TV viewers in more than 80 million U.S. households. The deal, with San Francisco-based commerce-platform vendor Delivery Agent Inc., furthers PayPal’s recent push into the nascent market for so-called T-Commerce transactions, or …

As more and more financial institutions, processors, and networks climb on the instant-payments bandwagon, Computer Services Inc. has introduced a person-to-person payment service with a twist: It delivers near-real-time payments to recipients’ Visa debit cards. CSI, which calls its new service SPIN, for Social Payments Instant Network, has one client …

Mobile-payments processor Square Inc. on Wednesday moved to fill a gap in its product lineup by introducing Square Market, an e-commerce service for small U.S. merchants. Square Market publishes a merchant’s Web pages at no charge, doesn’t charge for listings, and charges a straight 2.75% of the sale for a …

n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n Merchant pricing is 0.9% of the sale plus 30 cents, which Gonthier says is only about one-third the cost of a credit card or PayPal Inc. transaction.

  In the wake of recent top-level management changes, shareholders of leading point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. last week voted overwhelmingly against the company’s executive-compensation plan. While the ballot was advisory, observers say it is noteworthy because stockholders rarely reject the pay plans corporate boards of directors now present …

In a move that indicates federal regulators are getting more serious about policing independent sales organizations and other merchant processors, the Federal Trade Commission on Friday announced it is suing Newtek Merchant Solutions and its former president, Derek Depuydt. The FTC added both Newtek and Depuydt as defendants in an …

A lawsuit brought earlier this month by the Federal Trade Commission against a telemarketer and its merchant processor should serve as a warning to independent sales organizations and other acquirers that they could be held responsible for their clients’ actions, according to a prominent payments attorney. “The FTC’s suit should …

As the popularity of mobile remote deposit capture grows, some payments observers say the risk that checks might be deposited more than once may increase, as well. To be sure, there’s nothing new about the risk of duplicate checks. The problem has existed at least since the 2004 introduction of …