The market for ultra-low-ticket song downloads from online music stores continues to heat up. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has launched a service on its Web-based operation, Walmart.com USA LLC, that offers single songs for 88 cents, or 11 cents cheaper than what has become the 99-cent standard price for songs available …
Read More »Yahoo’s PayDirect Enters the Overseas Remittance Market
Yahoo Finance, whose PayDirect person-to-person payment service has been in operation domestically for three years, is now offering PayDirect International to allow electronic remittances from domestic users to recipients overseas. Announced this week, the new international payment service is an effort by Yahoo Finance, a unit of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo …
Read More »BofA Hits 7-Million Mark in Online Banking Users
It may be cold outside throughout much of the country, but Bank of America says customers are starting to warm up to online banking in a big way. The Charlotte, N.C.-based banking company announced its online banking service has reached 7 million subscribers, making the bank the first financial-services company …
Read More »Peppercoin’s Big Ambitions in Small Payments
Peppercoin Inc., the Waltham, Mass.-based micropayments startup that only this week emerged from its test phase with a commercially available service, may have a small footprint in the transactions business so far, but its ambitions are big. First, it plans to snag more merchant signings like the one it announced …
Read More »BitPass Gets Set for Prime Time
In an eventful week in the micropayments market, Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup BitPass Inc. emerged from its beta test and opened its service to all Internet merchants interested in using the BitPass system for payments. The company now has more than 300 content sellers enrolled, up from about 200 in …
Read More »Peppercoin Signs Blue Note and Goes Commericial
Peppercoin Inc., a Waltham, Mass.-based micropayments startup, announced today it has signed on to process payments for Blue Note Records, a unit of EMI Music Publishing. Beginning in the first quarter of 2004, Peppercoin will deploy its technology to handle purchases of single songs from Blue Note's site, www.bluenoterecords.radioplayer.com. The …
Read More »PayPal Chops Its Fees for Online Music Marketers
Online payments processor PayPal announced today a major reduction in its transaction fees exclusively for the burgeoning digital-music market, effective immediately. In what amounts to the Mountain View, Calif.-based processor's first serious foray into micropayments, it is offering pricing of 2.5% plus 9 cents for online song downloads, as compared …
Read More »Peppercoin Signs Blue Note and Goes Commercial
Peppercoin Inc., a Waltham, Mass.-based micropayments startup, announced today it has signed on to process payments for Blue Note Records, a unit of EMI Music Publishing. Beginning in the first quarter of 2004, Peppercoin will deploy its technology to handle purchases of single songs from Blue Note's site, www.bluenoterecords.radioplayer.com. The …
Read More »Survey Hints at Rising Micropayments Adoption by Online Merchants
A survey of more than 170 senior-level executives for electronic payments processors, networks, and online merchants at a micropayments conference held earlier this month indicates a majority of the online merchants in attendance will be selling content with a micropayments system within a year. The survey, whose results were released …
Read More »Special Report: Online Fraud’s Hidden Impact
Separate studies of online transaction fraud released this week cast new light on the problem of fraudulent Web transactions. The rate of online fraud is declining, according to a survey of online merchants conducted in October by CyberSource, Mountain View, Calif., a processor of online transactions. But indirect costs resulting …
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