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Amazon.com Inc. quietly killed its PayPhrase online-authentication service on Feb. 20, not quite two-and-a-half years after introducing the system. The PayPhrase credentials system allowed online shoppers to check out using only a word or phrase of their choosing and a PIN that they had registered with the Amazon Payments service. …
Read More »Banks Can Mine P2P for Big Revenue If They Can Get It Right, Networks Say
Financial institutions have much to gain from fees and cost savings if they offer person-to-person payments and get it right, according to representatives of three leading P2P networks who spoke on a panel at a banking conference on Monday. The keys to getting this relatively nascent payment form right lie …
Read More »PayPal Lifts the Curtain on an Overhauled Wallet As Rumors Swirl About a Mobile Dongle
With rumors swirling that it is close to launching a mobile-acceptance device for small merchants, PayPal Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a digital wallet that offers a raft of new features at a time when major rivals like Google Inc. and Visa Inc. are introducing new wallets. PayPal’s product, which it …
Read More »Fiserv Combines Its P2P Payments Services Under the Popmoney Brand
Building on its $465 million acquisition in September of person-to-person payments service CashEdge Inc., bank processor Fiserv Inc. on Wednesday announced it will combine CashEdge’s Popmoney with Fiserv’s ZashPay P2P payment networks under the Popmoney name. The combined network, which also will be integrated into Fiserv’s CheckFree RXP payment suite, …
Read More »Threat of Identity Theft Stalks Users of Social Media and Smart Phones
After bottoming out in 2010, identity fraud rose nearly 13% last year, according to new findings from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin’s findings also associate two hallmarks of the tech-oriented early 21st Century, social networks and smart phones, with a higher risk of identity fraud. Pleasanton, Calif.-based Javelin surveyed 5,022 …
Read More »Facebook Seeks New Revenues with a Promotion for Its Virtual Currency
Behind all the buzz about social payments and virtual currency is an often-overlooked fact: few social-network members today actually use digital money. The antidote for this ailment, according to executives in the social-networking world, is something they call monetization, which is simply a term for tactics that generate revenues from …
Read More »As Payments Boom for Facebook, Competition Could Cut into Revenues
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Read More »Research Identifies an E-Commerce Premium, But How Long Will It Last?
A longstanding truism in the acquiring business is that smaller merchants tend to generate more profit than their larger counterparts. But now research has emerged to show that smaller online merchants are even more profitable for acquirers and processors than brick-and-mortar stores of the same size. In fact, across all …
Read More »Web Merchants See Fraudulent-Order Rate Fall, But the Good News Comes at a High Cost
Online merchants made some progress last year against fraud, but the fight is becoming more and more expensive for them in terms of both dollar losses and operational costs, according to a report issued on Tuesday. Indeed, the news for e-commerce sellers is mixed at best. While fraudulent orders as …
Read More »Protests Might Remove Acquirers From the Online Piracy Fray
The Internet revolt over bills in the U.S. House and Senate aimed at thwarting online piracy might have a welcome side effect for merchant acquirers in possibly getting them out of an unwanted role as deputies charged with enforcing public policy. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia captured international headlines Wednesday when …
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