Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
The effort to bring faster payment settlement to the United States gained momentum this week with an announcement by The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC that it plans to build what it calls a “real-time payment system.” The New York City-based organization, which is owned by the largest financial institutions …
Read More »Amazon Finesses Payments by Adding Recurring Billing to Its Log in And Pay Feature
Recurring billing is now available from Amazon Payments, putting the online payment service from Amazon.com Inc. on more equal footing with competitors that already offer the feature. n And when consumers update their payment cards, such as to replace an expired card, the update applies to payments made to merchants. …
Read More »Intuit Becomes an Electronic Bill-Pay Player With Its Acquisition of Check Inc.
By Jim Daly In what’s shaping up to be a very busy year in the vibrant world of electronic bill payments, financial-management software provider Intuit Inc. on Tuesday announced plans to buy online and mobile bill-pay services provider Check Inc. for $360 million. Rumored for about a month, the deal …
Read More »NACHA Unveils Opt-In Program To Reduce Exceptions in ACH Bill Payments
In a further escalation of its war on costly bill-payment exceptions, automated clearing house governing body NACHA on Monday announced a new program that will convert erroneous electronic bill payments that otherwise would go through as paper checks into ACH transactions with a new field where the biller can enter …
Read More »Mobile Photo Bill Pay Helps Bring in Younger, Higher-Income Customers, U.S. Bank Exec Says
By John Stewart Nearly a year after its launch, a service at U.S. Bank that lets customers enter biller details and pay bills by snapping photos of the bills with a smart phone is helping the banking giant make big gains with mobile users, a critical demographic group, a U.S. …
Read More »Only $36 Billion of $2.1 Trillion Bill-Payment Market Paid Via Mobile Devices
The impact of tablets and smart phones on payments is largely unfelt in bill payment with only $36 billion of the $2.1 trillion in annual bill payments made by these mobile devices, finds a new report from consultancy Javelin Strategy & Research. That equates to about 5% of U.S. consumers. …
Read More »By Snagging Official Payments, ACI Bolsters Client Base, Recurring Revenue
ACI Worldwide Inc.’s $109 million deal to buy Official Payments Holdings Inc. is a bid to grow its transaction volume and pairs well with its January purchase of Online Resources Corp., analysts suggest. Official Payments is a processor that specializes in online payments to government entities. ACI Worldwide is paying …
Read More »Native Electronic Applications Shine on the ACH As Check-Based Codes Slide
By John Stewart n Electronic processing of payments that originate as paper checks dropped dramatically in the second quarter on the automated clearing house network, while payments that start out as electronic items grew briskly, according to the latest report from NACHA, the ACH’s governing body. n The decline in …
Read More »Sale of Financial-Service Unit Narrows Intuit’s Payments Focus on Acquiring, Mobile POS
Intuit Inc.’s sale of its financial-services division, which it announced on Monday, will likely narrow the Mountain View, Calif.-based software giant’s focus in the electronic-payments business, leaving it with an established stake in merchant processing and mobile acceptance. Intuit agreed to sell the financial division to private-equity firm Thoma Bravo …
Read More »First-Quarter NACHA Stats Again Reflect Slow Death of Paper Checks
The slow death of paper checks showed up again in the latest quarterly statistics from NACHA, the regulatory body for the automated clearing house network. The ACH, which links virtually every financial institution in the country, allows banks and merchants to convert checks into electronic formats. But transaction volume on …
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