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It isn’t often that a municipality is recognized for its work in the payments space. But that’s what happened Tuesday when NACHA, governing body of the automated clearing house network, gave a New York City department its George Mitchell Payments System Excellence Award for transforming the city’s decentralized, inefficient and …
Read More »Non-Bank Rivals, Lack of Account Coverage Haunt Growing Real-Time Trend
A panel of two bankers and a banking-services provider gave an upbeat appraisal Monday of industry moves toward real-time payments, but indicated financial institutions still have a long way to go to serve customer demand and meet competitive thrusts from non-bank players. “We’ve got more work to do,” said Roy …
Read More »NACHA Reports Nearly 5% Volume Growth for the ACH Network in 2014
On the heels of healthy quarterly growth, NACHA reported Thursday that the automated clearing house network handled nearly 23 billion electronic transactions in 2014, up by 1 billion payments, or nearly 5%, from 2013. Dollar volume was up more than 3%, to more than $40 trillion. These overall volume numbers …
Read More »NACHA Stats Show Nearly 5% Growth for the ACH in 2014’s Holiday Quarter
All things considered, the holidays were kind to the ACH. Transactions on the automated clearing house network grew 4.7% in the final three months of 2014 compared to the fourth quarter of 2013, while dollar volume moved by the network climbed 4.9%, according to statistics from NACHA, the governing body …
Read More »Dwolla And BBVA Turn on a Real-Time, Tokenized Payments Service
A real-time payments system featuring tokenized transactions opened to all comers on Wednesday when Houston-based BBVA Compass Bank announced its connection with processor Dwolla Inc. is live for commercial use. “We’ve been in a live environment [with BBVA] for the last two to three weeks with friends and family but …
Read More »With 92% Backing, NACHA’s Same-Day Proposal Will Go to Ballot Within Weeks
A proposal to speed up processing on the automated clearing house network from next-day to same-day settlement will go to a ballot among NACHA voting members as early as next month, according to information posted this week on NACHA’s Web site. NACHA took comments on the proposal from early in …
Read More »An Interbank Fee Is a Fly in the Ointment for Retailers Reacting to Same-Day ACH Idea
Merchants that have spent years battling card-acceptance fees are turning a jaundiced eye toward a proposal to speed up payments on the nation’s automated clearing house network. That’s because the same-day settlement proposal, floated in December by NACHA, the ACH’s rules-setting organization, contains a so-called interbank fee that, for some …
Read More »It’s Quieter Than Starbucks, But Cumberland’s Mobile App Is Ringing up Results, Too
Gasoline retailer Cumberland Farms, which operates nearly 600 stores in eight Northeastern states, is proving you don’t have to sell fancy coffee concoctions to generate impressive results with a mobile app. The program, which Cumberland calls SmartPay, enrolled 100,000 customers in the first 45 days after its 2013 launch—a response …
Read More »Observers Applaud Fed’s Payments Plan, But Lament Slow Pace of Progress
Now that the Federal Reserve has released its plan for faster payments in the United States, observers are applauding the effort while expressing some impatience with what they see as the central bank’s overly deliberate approach. “The Fed is indeed headed in the right direction, but it is a slow …
Read More »The Fed Releases Strategies, Plans for Faster Payments, Looks for Industry Participation
In a blueprint released Monday for a faster and more secure U.S. payments system, the Federal Reserve called for industry task forces to form early this year and for a “framework” to emerge by 2016 to set rules for near real-time payments. The banking regulator also set out five broad, …
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