Payment card interchange will be in Congress's spotlight again on Thursday when the House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing about the controversial Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008, a bill that would put price controls on card-acceptance costs. Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the assistant majority leader, is working …

NACHA's online-payments pilot went live March 31 with one bank and one merchant and expects to have three to five more financial institutions, three to five more merchants, and between three and five billers participating by the end of the year, an official with the Herndon, Va.-based organization says. “The …

Best known for its focus on restaurant merchant acquiring, Heartland Payment Systems Inc. is about to become a major force in acquiring card transactions for petroleum retailers and convenience stores thanks to its pending, $77.5 million acquisition of Alliance Data Systems Corp.'s Network Services unit. Alliance Data recently put that …

It's the new, old payment system. That's essentially how an electronic-payments startup called eLayaway LLC is billing itself as it prepares for bigger things following two years of testing and a low-key rollout to merchants and consumers. Tallahassee, Fla.-based eLayaway's slogan is “credit is overrated.” Its system allows consumers, once …

The troubled buyout of Alliance Data Systems Inc. by private-equity firm The Blackstone Group officially died this past weekend, a death that came as no surprise to the payments industry. But still alive is Alliance's effort to sell its merchant-acquiring business built around the former BSI Business Services Inc. front-end …

Implementation of the controversial Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) would be prohibited under new legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month. The UIGEA bans gaming sites from accepting money transfers of any kind for bets deemed to be unlawful gambling. It also directs …

Debit is where the transaction growth is, and now MasterCard Inc. is positioning itself at the center of the action with a new debit-processing platform for card issuers that it calls Integrated Processing Solutions. IPS handles everything from ATM and signature- and PIN-based debit card transactions to prepaid cards?and it …

Three months after biometrics-technology provider and payment processor Pay By Touch sought protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles, the dismantling of the firm’s sprawling empire is largely over. Judge Thomas B. Donovan recently approved the sale of the core assets of Solidus Networks Inc.—the formal name of Pay …

PIN debit on the Internet may become a commercial reality in 2008 if the small Atlanta company that bought ATM Direct from the bankrupt Pay By Touch Inc. fulfills ambitious plans it has laid out for the processor. Over the course of the next 90 to 120 days, ATM Direct …

In a move that it hopes will attract more users to its mobile-payments product, Obopay Inc. is allowing account holders to send money to other persons directly out of their checking accounts. In a further change, recipients of these transfers no longer need to have Obopay accounts and may have …