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While the burgeoning digital song market has focused attention on the potential for micropayments in the U.S., a Canadian processor has signed about 1,000 online merchants, the most recent of which is Puretracks, Canada's first and largest purveyor of digital songs. Vancouver-based Paystone Technologies Corp., which was founded in 2001, …
Read More »UniRush Launches Bill Payment for its Growing Card Base
UniRush Financial Services, a unit of UniRush LLC, New York, today announced an agreement with Milwaukee-based processor Metavante Corp. that allows holders of its prepaid Rush Visa card to use cash accounts linked to the card to make electronic bill payments. The service went live Friday, UniRush says, and is …
Read More »CyberSource: PIN-Less Online Debit Responds to Merchant Demands
CyberSource Corp. says it has introduced a so-called PIN-less debit card payment option for online transactions at the urging of merchants looking for ways to cut their transaction costs. The Mountain View, Calif.-based payments gateway for e-commerce merchants claims to be the only major vendor offering the service, which would …
Read More »Micropayments Potential Attracts Growing Optimism Among Experts
The stunning success of such ventures as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music service, coupled with a huge, untapped potential in transactions, has many expert observers becoming more and more optimistic about the prospects for micropayment processing. That may bode well for recent startups such as BitPass Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., …
Read More »Behind PassMark’s ‘Keep it Simple’ Plan to Fight Phishing Fraud
Woodside, Calif.-based PassMark Security LLC, which incorporated only in February to attack phishing and other online transaction fraud, says it has attracted interest in its solution from banking and retailer Web sites. The company is now in serious discussions with “eight to ten major sites,” says Bill Harris, chief executive, …
Read More »Latest Numbers Show Unrelenting Rise in Phishing Attacks
The criminal activity known as phishing soared to new heights last month, according to statistics released today by the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The consortium of Internet companies and law-enforcement agencies reported that the number of unique phishing incidents recorded by the group rose 180% to 1,125 in April, more than …
Read More »PayPal: Yes to Online Songs, Not Sure About Micropayments
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 …
Read More »Stats Show Ominous Increase in Spam and Phishing Attacks
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 …
Read More »Online Processor Digency Gets Close to Geo-Location Pilots
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 …
Read More »E-Checks Score 27% Growth in the First Quarter
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 …
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