Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has announced it is accepting PayPal in the U.S. for payment of song downloads, audiobooks, and gift certificates, effective today. The development represents a major breakthrough for the San Jose, Calif.-based payments unit of eBay Inc. and comes a year after the company slashed …
Read More »CyberSource Sees Online Holiday Traffic Peaking Next Tuesday
CyberSource Corp. predicts that the increase in holiday spending online will be about equal with the rise in volume seen during the same time in 2003, disputing the estimates of some observers that e-commerce traffic growth will be lower this year. Growth last year in the fourth quarter was 25% …
Read More »Visa Adds Chargeback Rights to Its Rapidly Growing Interlink Card
Visa USA announced it is now offering chargeback rights to consumers holding its Interlink PIN debit card. The bank card network sees the extension of chargeback protection to PIN debit as a response to consumer expectation and a competitive edge for Interlink issuers. “As debit usage continues to grow, consumers …
Read More »Phishing Sites Multiply, Taking a Toll on Online Transaction Potential
Recent survey statistics document a continuing rise in both phishing sites and attacks, and underline the toll such security problems are taking on consumer confidence when conducting online transactions. In its latest report, the Anti-Phishing Working Group says the number of unique Web sites engaged in phishing fraud jumped to …
Read More »VeriSign Expects Its New Seal to Spread Rapidly on E-Commerce Sites
VeriSign Inc. says heavy promotion it's putting behind its new trust mark for e-commerce will drive the number of payment-gateway client sites displaying the mark from 40,000 currently to more than 70,000 by year's end. And it expects that number to double by the end of 2005. The Mountain View, …
Read More »Image Exchanges Look to Volume Jumps Now That Check 21 Is Law
The fledgling networks that traffic electronic check images rather than paper checks are looking for bigger volumes now that the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, popularly known as Check 21, has finally become law. “Now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon,” says Mark Craig, general manager of Endpoint Exchange, …
Read More »VeriSign Rolls out a New Trust Mark to Bolster Consumer Confidence
Just ahead of the holiday shopping season, VeriSign Inc. has introduced a new mark that e-commerce sites can display to reassure shoppers about the security of their payments. The VeriSign Secured Seal denotes that a Web site uses Secure Sockets Layer encryption and other technologies?including the company's gateways–to guard customer …
Read More »Gift Cards Take a Bigger Bite from Cash, Paper
The popularity of gift cards continues to grow, with some 64% of U.S. adults, or a projected 139 million people, now buying or receiving the products annually, up from 59% last year and just 36% three years ago. That's according to the latest annual survey on gift card usage from …
Read More »New Check Software to Let Merchants Cash in on Check 21
With the effective date for the Check Clearing for the 21st Century (Check 21) Act only 22 days away, few electronic payments observers doubt that the efficiencies of check imaging and image exchange will benefit banks. A lingering question, though, has been how much it will benefit retailers who accept …
Read More »Discover Sues, AmEx-MBNA Get Set in Wake of Supreme Court Decision
Within minutes of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision this morning to let stand a lower court's ruling forcing Visa and MasterCard to allow members to issue cards on the American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services Inc. networks, Discover filed suit against the bank card associations and AmEx announced it …
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