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A trade group that is developing a new transaction-messaging standard based on extensible markup language (XML) for financial transactions says it is now turning its attention to point-of-sale payments. The Interactive Financial Exchange Forum, Falls Church, Va., released earlier this year a version of the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) standard …
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 »PayPal Pays $150,000, Clarifies Terms to Settle New York Case
PayPal agreed today to pay the state of New York $150,000 and clarify its user agreement as part of a settlement of a case brought against the San Jose, Calif.-based online payments processor by the New York state attorney general's office. In the settlement, PayPal, a unit of online auction …
Read More »A New Online Processor Charts An Ambitious Course
Digency Inc., an El Dorado Hills, Calif.-based third-party processing startup specializing in Internet payments, has begun processing transactions for a handful of merchants and now looks to execute an ambitious business plan that calls for the company to earn $13 million in fee revenue in 2004 from some 240 online …
Read More »Suit Settled, eBay and Tumbleweed Target Online Security
Tumbleweed Communications Corp. hopes to move forward with eBay Inc. and its PayPal person-to-person transaction unit on solutions for online transaction and e-mail security issues now that the companies have settled patent-infringement lawsuits Tumbleweed initiated in May and September 2002. In the suits, filed originally against PayPal and then against …
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 »Busting Open the Transaction Silos
Hewlett Packard Co. thinks banks processing ATM, Web, branch, and other traffic in separate channels could benefit by switching all this volume through one common system. The company, which through its acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. owns the Tandem unit whose computers drive so many payment data centers, is readying …
Read More »A Cryptographer Says He Holds the Key to a Digital Currency
The dream of a digital currency, a form of money invented just for electronic transactions and just as anonymous as cash in the physical world, is at least as old as the original concept of the Mondex smart card 10 years ago. Next came Cybercash, Digicash, Beenz, Flooz, and others. …
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