Transaction Processing

Confirming long-standing industry speculation, Columbus, Ga.-based bank-holding company Synovus Financial Corp. on Tuesday said it would consider spinning off its processing subsidiary, Total System Services Inc. (TSYS), to Synovus shareholders. Assuming a spin-off eventually happens, TSYS will have played a key role in 2007's major processing-industry restructuring that will take …

Volume for Internet payment processor PayPal Inc. climbed 21% in the second quarter, to 172.9 million transactions, and the San Jose, Calif.-based company continues to make steady inroads with e-commerce merchants away from eBay Inc.'s online auctions, according to statistics filed last week by eBay, PayPal's parent company. Off-eBay volume …

More large merchants now meet the dictates of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, according to new numbers from Visa U.S.A. At the same time, Visa, the biggest payment-card network, is turning its security attention to small merchants, the source of the majority of data breaches. Visa and …

Though still growing in volume from month to month, substitute checks now account for only about one-third of total image-exchange traffic between banks, according to the latest industrywide data. By contrast, a year ago these costly paper printouts of check images amounted to 56% of all image-exchange volume. At the …

The booming popularity of prepaid cards has created opportunities for payments companies far beyond just issuing plastic cards. The reloading of already-issued prepaid cards, for instance, is emerging as a major business. And that means Monrovia, Calif.-based Green Dot Corp.'s 40,000-location reload network is attracting attention from such big companies …

PayPal Inc.'s much-anticipated mobile-commerce service made its official debut this week in a development PayPal executive Kevin Dulsky calls a “game-changing” event for the electronic-transactions business. The launch of PayPal Mobile Checkout, which claims at least 20 merchants signed up so far, follows weeks of speculation about the m-commerce version …

Michael D. Capellas, a tech executive from outside the payments industry, will head First Data Corp. as the No. 1 payment processor begins its new life as a privately held company. Capellas, who held top posts at MCI Inc. and Compaq Computer Corp., will take over as chief executive from …

The U.S Patent and Trademark Office has upheld substantially all of the claims contained in a key patent held by DataTreasury Corp. that covers processes related to check image exchange. The USPTO decision, reached in May but not made public until recently, follows a formal process in which Plano, Texas-based …

The fortunes of individual merchant acquirers not withstanding, the acquiring industry as a whole for decades has proffered an unofficial guarantee of recession-proof growth. But a new study by First Annapolis Consulting Inc. shows that changes in the acquiring industry's growth rates are increasingly correlated to retail sales growth. And …

Fraudsters have started using computer files that allow them to instantly create a phishing site on a compromised computer, a move that could make their activities harder to detect, a report from RSA Security Inc. says. The Bedford, Mass.-based security firm's Anti-Fraud Command Center has discovered what it calls a …