E-Commerce

With static passwords losing more and more effectiveness  as an authentication method, biometric identification is regaining momentum after years on the sidelines. A recent major example of this resurgence is Apple Inc.’s introduction this month of its new iPhone 5S, which features a fingerprint sensor to unlock the device. The …

In a sign of the increasing significance of mobile commerce in the U.S. economy, comScore Inc. reported on Tuesday that remote m-commerce sales totaled $10.6 billion in the first half of the year, or about 10% of total online volume, including desktop e-commerce. ComScore forecasts that online spending on mobile …

Looking to attract more small businesses that just want to process online payments, e-commerce kingpin Amazon.com Inc. is rolling out a new, streamlined version of its 6-year-old Amazon Payments service. The new platform, which includes a simplified application programming interface, front-end widgets, and a testing “sandbox,” minimizes integration time by …

Shopify Inc. hopes to lure small online sellers by the thousands to its e-commerce platform by making the typically vexatious business of taking payments as easy as possible. On Monday, the Ottawa-based company announced Shopify Payments, a service that lets Web merchants sign up to accept a broad range of …

By Jim Daly The U.S. virtual-currency market grew 52% in 2012 and this year it could more than double to $10.9 billion in purchases, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. What’s more, virtual currency is moving beyond its online-game moorings and into more real-world settings, though …

By Peter Lucas PayPal Inc. on Tuesday took more steps toward strengthening its in-store presence, and at the same time broadened the reach of its Bill Me Later lending service to consumers carrying private-label cards. Both arrangements are the result of an agreement with Alliance Data Systems Corp., a big …

PayPal Inc.’s point-of-sale initiative, which has seen the e-commerce processor penetrate thousands of stores while stirring controversy with at least some incumbent processors, will focus on achieving “ubiquity” and solving consumer “pain points” for the next several years, eBay Inc.’s chief executive said on Wednesday. The initiative, which began early …

As mobile-payments strategists struggle with clunky checkouts that lead to abandoned sales, a startup based in Albuquerque, N.M., is seeing dramatic early success with a 3-month-old solution that allows consumers to buy products from e-mail messages with a pair of clicks. The company, @Pay LLC, has signed up more than …

Biometric authentication will be in widespread use by financial institutions and online merchants by 2015, a payments-security expert predicts. “We’re at the threshold, it’s going to be common in the next year or so,” Al Pascual, a senior analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, tells Digital Transactions News. Pascual forecasts …

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 …