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The national automated clearing house network enjoyed its second-strongest first-quarter performance in the past five years, with 3.8% transaction growth year-over-year, according to statistics released Monday by NACHA, the network’s administrative agency. n The new growth energy comes as the 40-year-old electronic payments network readies a proposal to speed up …
Read More »Dwolla Adds Next-Day Transfers, Harnessing the ACH System
Dwolla Inc. is in the next-day transfer business now. The alternative-payment network announced Thursday it is offering the service for withdrawals from Dwolla accounts to its users’ bank accounts. Relying on the automated clearing house system, the transfer service is an opportunity to use an existing network while Dwolla continues …
Read More »NACHA’s New Same-Day Settlement Plan Draws Plenty of Questions From a Curious Crowd
You might call it the first stop on a long road show looming for automated clearing house network oversight body NACHA’s new proposal for same-day settlement of ACH transactions. The particular stop was a packed session at NACHA’s annual payments conference on Tuesday, where executives from financial institutions and payments …
Read More »In the Wake of Its Effort to Tokenize Card Numbers, The Clearing House Turns to the ACH
The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, which last summer announced its effort to tokenize payment card numbers, is now mulling a related system that would similarly mask sensitive consumer information related to automated clearing house transactions, and may have a proposal ready by year’s end. “It’s something we’ve spent a …
Read More »NACHA Unveils Opt-In Program To Reduce Exceptions in ACH Bill Payments
In a further escalation of its war on costly bill-payment exceptions, automated clearing house governing body NACHA on Monday announced a new program that will convert erroneous electronic bill payments that otherwise would go through as paper checks into ACH transactions with a new field where the biller can enter …
Read More »NACHA’s Latest Gambit for Faster Payments Stirs Cautious Optimism Mixed with Wariness
A fresh proposal to introduce a same-day settlement capability for the automated clearing house network is encountering cautious optimism mixed with a healthy dose of skepticism among expert observers. But NACHA officials clearly see the new proposal not only as a blueprint for speedier payments but also as a first …
Read More »How Merchants’ Quest for More Customer Loyalty Could Give New Life to Decoupled Debit
Might decoupled debit rise again? It very well could, according to some payments experts, and the light on the hill is the decoupled debit card issued by the battered and bruised discount retailer Target Corp. For nearly three months, Target has weathered a storm of bad publicity after confirming a …
Read More »Mitek Pictures Itself as a New Tech Provider in Mobile Biller-Direct Payments
Mobile-imaging software developer Mitek Systems Inc. on Wednesday announced its Mobile Photo Payments application that enables large billers to receive bill payments from consumers using their mobile devices. The service complements San Diego-based Mitek’s existing Mobile Photo Bill Pay product, which rolled out last year and is distributed mainly through …
Read More »Fed Report: Plastic Strengthens Its Grip on Payments As Credit Cards Resume Growth
More than ever, plastic dominates the business of electronic payments in the United States, with two-thirds of all noncash transactions in 2012 occurring on a card, up substantially from 60% just three years earlier. That’s according to the Federal Reserve System’s triennial payments study, released Thursday. The sweeping research report, …
Read More »The Fed Seeks Ideas on How To Take the Tail Fins Off of U.S. Electronic Payments
How to improve the U.S. payment system? Figure out a way to make electronic payments faster and more secure, as well as a system that would connect various closed-loop payment networks with hundreds of millions accounts. And reduce regulation, too. Those were some of the ideas bandied about Thursday at …
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