payment

The personal information you give to businesses may not be as secure as you hope, according to a new survey.

Around 55 percent of all businesses acknowledge that they secure credit card information but not Social Security numbers, bank account details, and other personal data, according to a survey of more than 500 companies released Wednesday by Imperva and Ponemon Institute.

The survey was conducted to determine how many companies are complying with PCI DSS, the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard. PCI DSS tries to ensure that businesses take specific measures to secure their Web sites, databases, and … Read more

Home Loan Interest Manager Pro provides a tool for monitoring every aspect of mortgages. While the program can get overwhelming, it ultimately helps users understand home loans.

With the program's many command options, we smartly headed to the topic-oriented Help file. This, along with the program's wizard, showed us how to navigate our loan within minutes. We needed to have a lot of information present to fill out the wizard (Interest rates, loan amounts, duration of the loan, etc.), but it was worth the hassle since it laid the foundation of our mortgage. Some other options were much … Read more

Credit Card Manager 2009 offers users a chance to keep all their credit card information in one place. While the program offers an extremely usable format, some may simply choose to manage a credit card via its Web site.

We made an immediate trip to the program's Help file because the interface was a blank slate with no direction for users. Reading the brief descriptions of the process, we quickly gained footing and a better understanding of the program as a whole. We filled out the vital information for all of our credit cards to find a simple listing … Read more

Excel Invoice Manager Express provides users with a fast, familiar way to write up invoices. By using an Excel format, users should feel instantly at home with this program.

The invoice program's interface is highly intuitive because it has been built within a spreadsheet. With a few choice command buttons, users familiar with Excel will know exactly where to input data and what to expect. However, an in-depth Help file is also available. The program's layout basically walks users through the process of creating an invoice. Well-labeled areas for customer addresses, their own company's address, and invoice … Read more

PayPal, eBay's well established but aging mechanism for online payments, is trying to rebuild itself for a new generation of online commerce possibilities.

At an event for press and developers on Thursday, PayPal and its partners described several new programming interfaces that are part of the company's upcoming Adaptive Payments Service and showed what developers can do with them.

For example, Microsoft will use the interface to enable payments within its forthcoming Azure cloud-computing service. And LiveOps' on-demand outsourcing service will use it to automatically handle fluctuating payment amounts and changes to who's being paid. Finally, the … Read more

Once a niche market, online banking has grown into a widely-used tool for the average consumer.

Among 3,988 adults surveyed in the U.S. by Gartner Group, 47 percent said they now bank online. In the U.K, 30 percent echoed the same response.

Results varied according to income. Gartner found that over half of all consumers earning more than $30,000 in the U.S. and 15,000 pounds in the U.K. bank on the Internet. Among lower-income households, 25 percent in America and 17 percent in the U.K. use online banking.

"Over the past … Read more

Some would say our cell phone bills are high enough already. But two emerging start-ups are hoping to make mobile devices a hub for one of the hottest trends on the Web: micropayments.

Enter Boku, which launched officially on Tuesday with a whirlwind of announcements: its public launch after a year in stealth mode, its acquisitions of smaller companies Paymo and Mobillcash, and a $13 million round of venture funding led by Benchmark Capital with contributions from Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

A social-networking, gaming, or retail Web site can install Boku as a payment platform much like PayPal. But … Read more

Ncome and Xpense is a program to monitor all finances in order to balance your household budget. You'll need to spend a little time mastering its overwhelming interface, but it's worth the time and effort.

This program's interface is initially a shock to the system. Users are ushered into a screen full of rows and columns, boxes and color-coded categories that are certain to result in a few head scratches. Luckily, the program's online Help file will explain the layout and hopefully result in an ability to navigate the intricately organized program. Once we familiarized ourselves … Read more

Newspaper and content providers on the Internet are getting increasingly antsy about how to make money. Kachingle announced its solution in February, and it has gained so much interest, the founders say, that the launch is being delayed while the team builds out the service so it can support what they think will be a popular offering.

Here's the basic idea of Kachingle: Users contribute a small amount, currently $5.00 per month, voluntarily. While surfing they select content sites they like and want to support. At the end of the month, their monthly fee is distributed to their sites, based on how much time they spent on each site.

Founder Cynthia Typaldos created the idea five years ago, but says it was too early. "Content providers weren't desperate enough," she says. They are now, but Kachingle isn't yet ready. It should launch in July. At the moment, some parts of the original product don't scale, Typaldos says.

Kachingle has had over 250 unsolicited inquires to use its service, of which 75 percent are from the U.S. and Canada, and 25 percent from the rest of the world, according to Typaldos. So far 80 percent of the queries are from bloggers and 20 percent from other content sites like newspapers, some of which have multiple sites and millions of users.

"We're going to have at least three, probably five or six major newspapers signed up by the time we launch," said Fred Dewey, CEO of Kachingle. … Read more