E-Commerce

Merchants and other proponents of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment, which will regulate debit card interchange rates starting this summer, argue that the law will benefit consumers by allowing retailers to pass on lower transaction costs to their customers. While banks and other critics say this is unlikely, an alternative-payments …

Discover Financial Services on Tuesday found itself at the center of two announcements signaling increasing interest in the payments industry in alternative payments and electronic billing. Ebillme, an online-payments service offered by Rye Brook, N.Y.-based ModaSolutions Corp., said online merchants that accept Discover cards will be able to accept eBillme …

First Data Corp., one of the largest merchant processors in the country, said on Monday it will offer an Internet PIN debit option to its merchant clients starting some time in the second quarter. The option will be available to the company’s 300,000 merchants that derive at least some of …

Visa Inc. on Wednesday said it will relieve merchants outside the U.S. of the requirement to validate compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) if the merchants process at least three-quarters of their Visa transactions from chip-enabled terminals. In a busy day at the world’s largest payments network, …

The drastic reduction in debit card interchange revenue mandated by the Durbin Amendment will be somewhat favorable for PayPal Inc., an official with the e-commerce processor’s parent company said on Wednesday. “In the short and the medium term, we believe it’ll probably be neutral to positive on our performance,” said …

Good news for online merchants: In 2010, for the second year in a row, fraud losses expressed as a percentage of revenue went down. They came to 0.9%, down about $600 million from 1.2% in 2009, according to the latest research from CyberSource Corp., a unit of Visa Inc. that …

Credit cards will continue to dominate online payments for at least the next five years, but they will lose share to debit cards, alternative payments, and prepaid and gift cards, according to new projections from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin predicts in its “2010 Online Retail Payments Update and Forecast” …

Supporters of WikiLeaks attacked the Visa and MasterCard Web sites on Wednesday after the bank card networks cut off donation transactions to the controversial online anti-secrecy organization that recently disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables. The attacks, which slowed down the networks’ Web sites or made …

Most of the chatter about who will win or lose when the Federal Reserve Board releases its debit card interchange regulations and related rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law centers on card issuers, payment networks, and merchants. But technology vendors are likely to be affected too. One company that …

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have ignited a promising start to the 2011 holiday spending season that appears to signal a revival in consumer spirits following a deep recession and wobbly recovery, according to a number of statistical indicators that have been released this week. Transactions on Monday at some …