Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
The wild popularity of song downloads has not only helped make a case for micropayments processing, it has drawn wireless carriers into the market with the idea that consumers will pay significantly more than the standard online rate of 99 cents per track for the convenience of loading songs over …
Read More »NACHA Starts Drive to Sign up Participants for Web-Payment Pilot
A recruitment effort began today to find banks, billers, and merchants to participate in a pilot of a new system by which consumers would be able to make payments on the Internet through the automated clearing house. Sponsored by NACHA, the Herndon, Va.-based organization that sets rules for the ACH, …
Read More »Google Could Be Weeks Away from Launching a PayPal-Like Service
Google Inc., whose recent moves to create an online-payments service for use on some of its own platforms have stirred considerable speculation about its ambitions in electronic transactions, will launch a service soon that will compete with existing e-commerce payment marks like PayPal, says a source familiar with the matter. …
Read More »A New Tactic Aims at Thwarting Efforts to Shut Down Phishing Sites
A new tactic has been discovered that lets fraudsters keep their online crimes going even as authorities are identifying and shutting down phishing sites. RSA Security Inc., whose RSA Cyota Anti-Fraud Command Center discovered the new tactic, says it is called a smart redirection attack and is intended to make …
Read More »U.S. Encode Readies a CD/Mag-Stripe Card for Online, POS Use
A small San Diego company is working on a new type of transaction card that combines the characteristics of a compact disk and a mag-stripe card, allowing consumers to perform both credit and debit transactions online as well as at physical points of sale. U.S. Encode Corp., incorporated in 2002, …
Read More »Survey Shows Sizable Opportunity for EBPP in P&C Insurance
Some 73% of homeowner-insurance and auto-insurance customers would be willing to pay their premiums online, yet most of them pay with cash or check and nearly all of them still receive their bills in the mail, according to a new survey. The survey, which points to a significant opportunity for …
Read More »Google’s Payments Moves Excite Comment, But May Not Threaten PayPal
Search-engine giant Google Inc. may be ramping up its electronic-payment capability for users, but it's a long way from competing with PayPal Inc. as a processor of general-purpose Internet transactions, a payments-industry researcher says. “It will take a few years for Google to even consider competing with PayPal, if they …
Read More »December Brought No Holiday Cheer to Those Fretting over Phishing
December was an ominous month for banks, retailers, processors, and other service providers concerned about the safety of the Internet commerce channel. Although the reported number of phishing incidents declined in the last month of last year, that drop masked alarming increases in the number of malicious Web sites launching …
Read More »SECURE-eBill Starts to See U.S. Merchant and Consumer Adoption
Eight months after rolling out its Internet payment service in the U.S., Ottawa-based MODASolutions says it is seeing results, both in merchant recruitment and in consumer adoption. The company, whose SECURE-eBill product allows consumers to pay e-commerce merchants in the same way they make electronic bill payments, won't disclose transaction …
Read More »Click&Buy Will Expand Online Payment Options to Phone Bills April 1
Webpay Inc.'s Click&Buy payment service, which handles largely digital-content sales, will begin processing transactions on consumers' phone bills April 1. The service will work with two so-far unnamed telecommunications carriers that together cover 55% of U.S. land-line subscribers, says Fabian G. Siegel, president and chief executive of Webpay, which has …
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