E-Commerce

PayPal may be getting close to processing payments for online song downloads, but it's not likely to be moving more broadly into micropayments any time soon. The San Jose, Calif.-based payment-processing unit of online auctioneer eBay Inc. finished adding functionality to its system last month to handle song payments and …

Recent industry statistics paint a grim picture of how pervasive spam, and with it e-mail fraud, is becoming in the U.S. transaction economy. Brightmail Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of anti-spam software, reports that the volume of spam hit 64% of some 96 billion e-mail messages its systems filtered in …

Digency Inc. is within a month of signing its first clients for tests of a new system it has developed that fights e-commerce fraud by pinpointing Web users' geographic location, according to Ed R. Starrs, chief executive of the El Dorado Hills, Calif.-based e-commerce processor. Dubbed “Geocate,” the product has …

Use of the automated clearing house for various electronic consumer transactions continued to climb in the first quarter, rising 27% from the fourth quarter of 2003 and 123% over the year-ago period, according to the National Automated Clearing House Association, Herndon, Va. Electronic checks?in which transactions are converted to electronic …

More evidence of the possible damage being done by phishing to e-commerce emerged in survey results released today by technology research firm Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn. The survey, which was completed last month and canvassed 5,000 adult Web users, indicates that 30 million users think they have definitely been a …

A survey conducted last month shows the extent to which e-mail fraud schemes, also known as phishing scams, are affecting consumers and their willingness to do business online, just as financial institutions and retailers are pushing to move more transactions into the online channel. Fully 75% of bank accountholders are …

Peppercoin Inc., a micropayments processor in Waltham, Mass., sees a potential market for transactions of small and very small values reaching into the trillions of dollars, embracing both the online and point-of-sale markets. To tap that potential, the new company is moving toward a rollout, planned for mid-summer, of a …

More than 300 sellers are set to participate April 27 in the first online auction in which all transactions will be guaranteed by surety bonds. Dealers in antiques and collectibles will sell their wares during the auction, scheduled for April 27-May 2 at BondedSale.com, a site jointly sponsored by online …

Authorize.net Inc., which serves as a payments gateway for 91,000 mostly mid-size and small Web-based merchants, is making a major play for the brick-and-mortar point of sale. With the backing of its new owner, Burlington, Mass.-based Lightbridge Inc., Authorize.net is revving up its marketing and re-seller efforts to expand rapidly …

Exadigm Inc. thinks merchants and acquirers should be able to take for granted wireless and Internet connections for point-of-sale terminals in the same way everyone does for personal computers and cell phones. So it is gearing up a major marketing effort for a new terminal that runs on the Linux …