Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
In a move calculated to expand its business in e-commerce and mobile transactions, Visa Inc. on Wednesday said it will buy CyberSource Corp., an online gateway and merchant acquirer, for $2 billion in cash. The deal, which is expected to close by Sept. 30, brings together the world’s largest payment …
Read More »Mercury Payment Sells Stake As M&A Reps Prowl the ETA Show
The growing interest of private-equity firms in merchant processors showed itself again Wednesday when the big independent sales organization Mercury Payment Systems Inc. disclosed that Silver Lake would take a 60% interest in the company. Meanwhile, private-equity executives were out in force at the Electronic Transactions Association annual meeting in …
Read More »A Bundled Approach to PCI Compliance for Small Merchants
As smaller merchants struggle with data-security requirements set by the bank card networks, some security firms are working on ways to simplify compliance. An example is Panoptic Security Inc., a Salt Lake City, Utah-based company that distributes its software through independent sales organizations and acquiring banks. It has started talking …
Read More »MasterCard Gets a New Boss, Signs E-Commerce Pact
MasterCard Inc. announced a notable pact with a technology company Friday that the No. 2 payment card network says would drive e-commerce transaction volume. That news, however, was overshadowed Monday morning when MasterCard announced that Ajay Banga, the company's president and chief operating officer, would replace long-time chief executive Robert …
Read More »The ACH Bucks a Soft Economy As Transaction Volumes Rise
A soft economy didn't prevent automated clearing house transaction volumes from growing last year, though the rate of increase slowed, according to new data from NACHA?The Electronic Payments Association. The Herndon, Va.-based governing body of the ACH reports total transactions rose 2.6% to 18.76 billion from 18.29 billion in 2008. …
Read More »Gonzalez Sentence Is No Deterrent to Hackers, Security Expert Warns
The 20-year sentence imposed last week on Albert Gonzalez of Miami, the computer hacker who led the attack on Heartland Payment Systems, TJX Cos., and other major retailers, won't deter future data breaches, a security expert says. Gonzalez, leader of the largest hacking and identity-theft ring ever prosecuted by the …
Read More »DataTreasury’s Trial Victory Doesn’t Bring Legal Marathon to an End
The jury verdict rendered Friday in favor of a small software company that says big banks and processors are trampling on its electronic-check patents may have boosted that company's cause but it hardly brings down the curtain on what has been a costly legal marathon for the payments industry. “We're …
Read More »Fed Surprises Prepaid Industry with a Tight Deadline for Compliance
Meeting the Aug. 22 deadline for complying with new rules for prepaid and gift cards released on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve will be a logistical nightmare for card companies and retailers that have to replace hundreds of millions of cards before the 2010 holiday shopping season, according to a …
Read More »Heartland Preps for Its Big End-to-End Encryption Rollout
Merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc.'s sales force will begin selling the company's new end-to-end encryption system in the second quarter following testing that began last June, the company says. Heartland also says several terminal manufacturers are integrating the technological protocols of its system, which was developed by Voltage Security …
Read More »All-Digital Checks Get a Boost from an ‘Outsider’ Technology Startup
The concept of an all-digital check, which surfaced in a paper published in November by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, could move from theory to reality in a matter of months now that a technology startup in Atlanta has won a pair of patents covering applications of the idea. …
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