E-Commerce

Bitcoin may remain volatile and controversial, but the digital currency holds enough potential that it is starting to attract seasoned payments professionals, particularly in the business of merchant acceptance. Witness Bitnet, founded in January by a pair of former executives with payments processor CyberSource Corp. to make it easier for …

Law-enforcement agencies and government regulators may be skeptical of, if not outright hostile to, the Bitcoin virtual currency, but at least a few investors have a different attitude. Witness this week’s announcement by BitPay Inc., a processor that provides Bitcoin services to merchants. Atlanta-based BitPay said it had raised $30 …

  Shopify Inc. can eliminate learning new languages from its list of objectives. The online-commerce company announced this week it was adding 2Checkout’s payment technology, which processes payments in 26 currencies in 196 countries, to its POS software. The move does not displace the back-end payment-processing compact between Shopify and …

EBay Inc.’s first-quarter conference call Tuesday was as remarkable for what chief executive John Donahoe did not say as for what he did say. Asked by a stock analyst for an update on PayPal Inc.’s move into physical stores, Donahoe added little to what eBay and its PayPal unit have …

Card-not-present merchants contending with the double-digit growth of e-commerce and mobile commerce often face more exposure to fraudulent transactions. Vesta Corp., an Alpharetta, Ga.-based payments-security company, says its new payment gateway vSafe can help reduce that fraud. n The gateway relies on data from more than 1 billion transactions made …

Merchants that think payment services should leverage software, be simple to integrate, carry low or no fees, and include digital-currency choices have a champion in PayStand, a startup that emerged Tuesday from private beta with $1 million in funding and a promise of no transaction fees for online sellers. The …

The up-and-down course Bitcoin has followed in recent months continued on Monday as Square Inc. announced it has started accepting the digital currency on Square Market, the online marketplace it unveiled last June. The news lent some legitimacy to Bitcoin just as the currency was reeling from an Internal Revenue …

At a time when both banks and retailers are reeling from a rash of payment-data breaches, a technology company that has developed a system some believe could stop these breeches has announced that it has secured new patent protection for its technology. Mentor, Ohio-based CardinalCommerce Corp. said this week it …

The J.M. Smucker Co.’s online store is expected to reopen next week, nearly a month after the jam-and-jelly producer closed it after discovering that hackers had broken into its computer system and stolen payment card data and other personal information on up to 23,000 customers. In other data-security news, beauty …

Despite Bitcoin’s recent travails, the fledgling digital currency has begun to win support from some of the nation’s best-known merchants. This week came news that department-store chain Lord & Taylor will start accepting Bitcoin through a mobile app called Pounce. The news followed upbeat Bitcoin results released by online retailing …