The FBI issued a press release earlier today highlighting concerns about an increase in ACH-based fraud targeting online banking credentials of small businesses, governments and school districts.

From the press release: "Within the last several months, the FBI has seen a significant increase in fraud involving the exploitation of valid online banking credentials belonging to small and medium businesses, municipal governments, and school districts. In a typical scenario, the targeted entity receives a “spear phishing” e-mail which either contains an infected attachment, or directs the recipient to an infected website. Once the recipient opens the attachment or visits the website, malware is installed on their computer. The malware contains a key logger which will harvest each recipient’s business or corporate bank account login information. Shortly thereafter, the perpetrator either creates another user account with the stolen login information or directly initiates funds transfers by masquerading as the legitimate user. These transfers have occurred as both traditional wire transfers and as ACH transfers." READ MORE

RBS WorldPay has announced that National Payment Card Association (NPCA) debit cards can be processed by RBS WorldPay. According to RBS WorldPay, "NPCA offers merchants a card acceptance solution with significantly lower transaction fees than traditional credit or debit cards." READ MORE

Over on PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes about the Same Day ACH session at this week's Association for Finance Professionals conference in San Francisco.

Carol writes: "The same day ACH proposal has most typically been talked about as a service which will apply to check conversion transactions – to enable electronics to clear as fast as paper would (don’t you love that). But I had not realized before that the Fed is also talking about this applying to WEB transactions. This would mean all those alternative-payment schemes for eCommerce could clear faster than card transactions!" Click to read more!

Intuit has soft-launched a new Intuit PaymentNetwork, calling it a "new and affordable way to send and receive payments over the Internet" for individuals and small businesses." A comprehensive set of help and support Q&A is available online.

For small businesses, the Intuit PaymentNetwork provides a low-cost payment alternative to credit cards for receiving payments - charging 50 cents per payment received irregardless of the amount (subject to certain limits). There are no monthly charges, equipment or set-up costs.

For individuals sending funds, you can send to anyone who is a member of the Intuit PaymentNetwork. If they're not already a member, they can join to receive their funds. At the present time, individuals can't receive funds.

More details available on the Intuit Small Business United blog.

In her latest post titled "Countdown to IAT: Are You Ready?" on our sister site PaymentsViews.com, Glenbrook's Erin McCune examines the new International ACH format – IAT – and accompanying NACHA rule changes that take effect next month on September 18th. If you are not sure how IAT affects you and your company, read on.

J.P. Morgan has announced the launch of Total Settlement, an electronic payment solution that helps businesses simplify the payment of supplier invoices and lay the foundation for complete order-to-pay automation. According to the bank, "Total Settlement consolidates Automated Clearing House (ACH), commercial card, wire, and standard paper check payments in a single file, eliminating the extra effort in accounts payable involved with processing multiple payment types. A self-service web portal for suppliers provides valuable payment status information, remittance details and allows suppliers to maintain their own contact and payment-related information." READ MORE

Bill.com has introduced Bill.com ePayments - a payment method seamlessly integrated with Bill.com's bill management service, which let SMBs pay any employee, individual or vendor, regardless of size, via electronic direct-deposit rather than with paper checks. Bill.com ePayments enable payment from any US bank account using the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network. READ MORE

Today over on our sister site PaymentsViews.com, our Glenbrook colleagues Carol Coye Benson and Erin McCune have each published articles about ACH. Carol recently interviewed NACHA CEO Jan Estep - see her article ACH: Big Questions for the Biggest Network. Erin's article discusses her thoughts on the future of ACH.

Synovus has announced an agreement with the University of Georgia to launch Secure Vault Payments (SVP) as a new tuition payment option. Synovus said that in 2008 it "became the first bank in the U.S. to offer customers this fast, safe and easy option for making payments online." READ MORE

Over on our PaymentsViews.com website, Glenbrook's Erin McCune shares her perspectives on last week's NACHA Payments 2009 Conference in Orlando.

See also Erin's earlier post about the keynote given by Heidi Miller from JP Morgan Chase.

The Federal Reserve Banks and Equens have announced "signing a Memorandum of Understanding for the processing of payments from the US to Europe and vice versa. Starting in early 2010, both parties will offer banks a cost-efficient channel for processing cross-border payments in multiple currencies, including the US dollar and euro." READ MORE

J.P. Morgan's Treasury Services business has announced it has been ranked by NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association as the top financial institution in total automated clearing house (ACH) network transactions originated for 2008. According to the bank, it has "led the industry in ACH originations for a record 34 years in a row, since the inception of the network. J.P. Morgan originated more than 3.5 billion ACH transactions last year." READ MORE

NACHA has published its lists of the top 50 ACH originators and receivers for 2008. The origination side is very concentrated with the top 10 originating financial institutions accounting for 73.3 percent of all interbank ACH payments in 2008, up slightly from 72.5 percent in 2007. For the receiving side, most closely representing the distribution of financial institutions deposit accounts across the industry, the top ten receiving institutions accounted for 39.4 percent of all interbank ACH payments in 2008, up slightly from 38.3 percent in 2007.

The number of ACH payments in 2008 topped 18.2 billion, representing an increase of 1.2 billion over 2007, according to statistics released today by NACHA – The Electronic Payments Association at its PAYMENTS 2009 conference. The dollar value of consumer ACH payments made via the Internet is nearing $1 trillion annually ($939 billion in 2008). READ MORE

This week, NACHA's Payments 2009 Conference is being held in Orlando. Our Glenbrook colleagues Erin McCune and Bryan Derman are attending the conference and will be sharing some of their learnings and reactions over on Glenbrook's PaymentsViews.com. Erin kicks off the coverage with an update on the latest B2B payments stats - and she'll also be tweeting her observations from her Twitter account (@erinmccune) using the hashtag #pay09. Bryan's on Twitter too: @bdermanct. If you'd like to meet with Erin or Bryan in Orlando this week, drop them an email!

Fiserv has announced a new outsourcing service to help large and mid-tier financial institutions reduce Automated Clearing House (ACH) processing costs and gain quicker time to market with new ACH services and NACHA Rule updates. According to the company, "ACH Outsourcing from Fiserv will enable financial institutions to move from a variable cost structure of in-house processing to a more predictable, volume-based cost model, built with the NACHA Rule updates included. The move to outsourcing could help banks gain immediate operational and IT cost savings, such as the elimination of ACH mainframe expense, software maintenance and upgrade costs." READ MORE

NACHA has announced that the number of US ACH payments in the 4th quarter 2008 grew by 4.5 percent over the same period in 2007, topping 3.8 billion. "Internet-initiated ACH payments (known as “WEB” entries) experienced robust growth, increasing 16.5 percent over 4th quarter 2007 volumes. Strong growth also occurred with certain business-to-business payments (known as “CTX” entries) in which remittance information is exchanged electronically. The number of these payments grew by 15 percent over 4th quarter 2007 levels." READ MORE

J.P. Morgan's Treasury Services business has announced that it has gone live with the first phase of enhancements to its international mass payments operating platform. According to the company, "the enhancements will deliver immediate benefits to clients using the bank's Global ACH service, including later cut-off times for receipt of payment instructions and intelligent routing which automatically selects the most expeditious route if a cut-off is missed." READ MORE

Noca, a Mountain View, California-based startup, has announced the launch of the beta version of its payment system - saying that it "virtually eliminates transaction fees for online merchants. At the heart of Noca's system is Secure Check™, a convenient, safe way for consumers to pay for content, digital media, physical goods and other purchases using their bank accounts directly from a merchant's site." READ MORE

Shell Oil Products US has announced it has launched the Shell Saver Card - saying it is "the first gasoline retailer to make an electronic check payment method available to consumers nationally. This latest Shell payment option provides consumers with a convenient way to pay for purchases with a direct link to a checking account and savings on each gallon of fuel pumped at Shell stations." READ MORE

WesPay (Western Payments Alliance) has announced the launch of its Payments Strategy Series, a collection of white papers that examine industry sound practices in the areas of payment systems, risk management, customer engagement and revenue stabilization. The first paper in the series, “Six Critical Elements of a Comprehensive Risk Management Program” examines the areas that financial institutions should address to reduce their payments systems risk.

NACHA has announced that Heidi Miller, CEO of J.P. Morgan’s Treasury & Securities Services, will keynote and open its PAYMENTS ‘09 conference being held April 5 - 9 at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Fla. Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, will headline the Industry Agenda General Session. READ MORE

Shell Oil Products US has announced that it will be "the first major gasoline retailer to nationally launch an electronic check payment method when the Shell $aver Card becomes available to consumers on January 5, 2009. The Shell $aver Card will provide a convenient, new way to pay for purchases through a direct link to a consumer’s checking account, and offer a savings on each gallon of fuel pumped at participating Shell-branded stations. Shell wholesalers and retailers will benefit from the Shell $aver Card’s flat, per-transaction merchant service fee that is lower than third-party debit and credit cards."

Also, according to Shell, First Data will be handling the $aver Card transactions including using FDC's TeleCheck check verification services. READ MORE

CashEdge has announced the launch of Small Business Me-to-Me Transfers, an online funds transfer product designed specifically to help financial institutions meet the needs of small businesses. READ MORE

In an article titled "The Holdup at Online Banks", Karen Blumenthal writes about why "transferring money between a savings account at one bank and a checking account at another easily takes two days -- and sometimes as many as four."

The Clearing House has announced that it is seeing accelerating usage of Universal Payment Identification Codes (UPICs) by public and private sector entities across the U.S. UPIC payments have grown to a record $4 billion in the third quarter of 2008, up 61% compared to the same period a year ago. A UPIC is used for credit payments only and thus lowers the possibility of unauthorized debits, checks and demand drafts. The UPIC was developed by the Electronic Payments Network (EPN), the ACH business of The Clearing House, in conjunction with the financial services industry. READ MORE

NACHA has announced that its PAYMENTS 2009 annual conference will be held April 5 - 9, 2009, at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Fla.

Glenbrook's Russ Jones recently met with Ken Myles of NACHA to get an update on NACHA's Secure Vault Payments initiative. Read on for Russ' insights and reactions to what he learned. READ MORE