Electronic Bill Payment

BB&T Corp. this week introduced a new mobile-banking service in which the Southeastern regional bank leaves little to chance. The bank will offer consumers three user interfaces for two-way interaction with BB&T through their cell phones or other mobile devices. And, in contrast to most banks' tech announcements, BB&T is …

Mobile-banking and payments application developer Firethorn Holdings LLC scored a coup this week when Verizon Wireless, the nation's No. 2 mobile-phone carrier, announced it had picked Firethorn as a strategic partner for mobile banking and would preload Firethorn's system onto newly issued phones. The agreement means the nation's two largest …

The already competitive world of electronic bill payments heated up this week with the announcement that wire-transfer leader The Western Union Co. and payment-technology provider Yodlee Inc. together will provide online bill-payment services, including expedited bill payments. Their pitch: direct access to more than 4,000 utilities, financial institutions, mortgage companies, …

At a time when companies as big and diverse as Google Inc., eBay Inc.'s PayPal, the bank card networks and others are all moving into mobile banking and payments, a regional bank in Mississippi has emerged as one of the more experienced players in the embryonic market. Tupelo-based BancorpSouth Inc. …

Though still in its infancy, mobile banking will balloon from 1.68 million to 34.9 million users over the next four years, laying the groundwork for mobile payment channels such as physical-world transactions via near-field communication (NFC) and mobile commerce, a new report argues. Already, report author Nick Holland, a senior …

Pulse EFT Association LP, which has become the latest electronic funds transfer network to introduce a commercial PIN-less debit service that allows cardholders to make recurring payments to certain billers, sees the service as a way to take payment market share from the automated clearing house network. “It's a great …

Data Insecurity Part 2 In a purely physical world, if you lost your wallet, and your Social Security card with it, you had a pretty good idea that something was amiss, and could report the loss and replace the card, if needed. Today, in a relentlessly electronic life, the Social …

Consumers' willingness to pay credit card bills online is rising rapidly, with 524 million transactions in 2006, a 27% jump over 414 million payments in 2005, according to survey data from comScore Inc. The most recent online payment volume, which represents payments consumers make at card issuers' Web sites, is …

Electronic bill-payment and presentment technology may be CheckFree Corp.’s sexiest products, but bank processor Fiserv Inc. will be get access to other fast-growing markets when its planned $4.4 billion cash acquisition of CheckFree, announced Thursday, closes. Most notable, perhaps, is that CheckFree just happens to be the leading provider of …

In a deal that will expand its client base of billers by 50%, Online Resources Corp. on Thursday announced it is buying Internet Transaction Solutions Inc. for $45 million in cash and stock. The Chantilly, Va.-based bill-payment processor says ITS, which processes payments for some of the country's largest collections …