Transaction Processing

Pay By Touch, a San Francisco-based company offering a biometrics-based technology that allows consumers to pay at the point of sale without presenting a card, keyfob, token, or any other payment medium, announced today that it has formed an alliance with IBM Corp. that should give the fledgling biometrics company …

Hold the requiem for cash. It's still flexing its muscles as a payment vehicle, as witness the deal announced today by Western Union Financial Services Inc. and Continental Airlines. Starting now, customers who book seats on the airline's Web site can pay by cash at any of 45,000 Western Union …

Nashville, Tenn.-based independent sales organization iPayment Inc. expects on Wednesday to close on its $55 million cash acquisition of an agent-bank portfolio from First Data Corp. The portfolio consists of 18,000 small merchant accounts controlled by 170 agent banks and generating about $4 billion in annual card volume. First Data …

First Data Corp. will not need to seek the approval of its shareholders for the revised terms announced Monday under which it will acquire Concord EFS Inc. First Data announced today it has been informed by the New York Stock Exchange that the NYSE will not require the Denver-based processor …

First Data Corp. and the Department of Justice this morning announced an agreement in which the government now gives the green light to FDC's acquisition of Concord EFS Inc. and in which the Denver-based processing giant agrees to sell its majority stake in the NYCE debit network. First Data now …

Peppercoin Inc., the Waltham, Mass.-based micropayments startup that only this week emerged from its test phase with a commercially available service, may have a small footprint in the transactions business so far, but its ambitions are big. First, it plans to snag more merchant signings like the one it announced …

Beset by complaints about the alleged lack of security surrounding their products, six makers of electronic voting machines have started a trade group intended to put to rest public apprehension about electronic voting. The six companies have formed the Election Technology Council in partnership with the Information Technology Association of …

Online payments processor PayPal announced today a major reduction in its transaction fees exclusively for the burgeoning digital-music market, effective immediately. In what amounts to the Mountain View, Calif.-based processor's first serious foray into micropayments, it is offering pricing of 2.5% plus 9 cents for online song downloads, as compared …

As financial-services companies begin switching out older ATMs for new ones running on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, they may at the same time be creating a security problem similar to the one that has long plagued network administrators overseeing fleets of networked computers running the same software. The problem …

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 …