Transaction Processing

With the loss or theft of computerized personal information making headlines almost daily, lawmakers are scrambling for solutions for what is shaping up to be the 21st Century's hottest non-violent crime. More than a dozen bills that would put new requirements on banks and other entities with access to sensitive …

Wachovia Corp., some of whose debit card holders have been victimized by a data breach that happened several months ago, began sending notices and replacement cards to those customers recently because it began to see signs of fraud after months of monitoring the accounts, the bank says. Although Wachovia's action …

Canadian police arrested 10 people Tuesday they say used rigged card terminals to intercept PINs as cardholders entered them at the point of sale as part of a scheme in which they stole $4 million (Canadian) from 18,000 customer bank accounts. More arrests are expected, according to the authorities. In …

With online search giant Google Inc. reportedly a week away from launching its long-expected payment service, observers differ on the question of whether the service will allow merchants to accept electronic payments on their own sites or be limited to Google's own platforms, especially the rapidly growing Google Base online …

The number of unique phishing attacks and the population of Web sites involved in the online fraud both hit all-time highs in May, following a disturbing trend of dramatic month-to-month increases since late 2005, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Reports of unique attacks?discrete e-mail blasts sent to consumers by …

Merchants' sluggishness in achieving compliance with the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) is a source of some frustration to vendors like LaGarde Inc., but Michael Levin, executive vice president of marketing and business development for the Olathe, Kan.-based marketer of shopping-cart software for e-commerce, doesn't see the pace picking …

Online retailers have long deployed front-end screening systems to check card-not-present transactions for fraud. A new software product announced Tuesday, however, is apparently the first commercially available product to automate what is now a heavily manual process of checking orders that don't pass these screens and yet are not unambiguously …

Think of electronic bill payments and, not surprisingly, the Internet usually comes to mind first. But many billers, especially banks, have yet to offer bill payments through telephone-based customer-service systems or automated interactive voice-response units, experts tell Digital Transactions magazine in an upcoming story on expedited bill payments. The Web's …

Another indication of the increased trafficking of electronic check images through image-exchange networks has emerged with a report from SVPCO that its Image Payments Network handled 50.8 million items in May, up 44.4% from April's volume. Average daily traffic hit 2.3 million images, a 31.2% jump from the previous month. …

In a development that could lead to the first significant use of PIN debit for Internet transactions, the ACCEL/Exchange electronic funds transfer network has agreed to handle PIN-secured debit card transactions processed by ATM Direct, a unit of San Francisco-based Pay By Touch Inc. The network, which is based in …