Twitter Abandons its Buy Button and other Digital Transactions News briefs

• Mastercard Inc. and investor and philanthropist George Soros announced plans “to explore private-sector solutions to societal challenges” by possibly creating a so-called social enterprise called Humanity Ventures that will apply commercial strategies to address such problems as joblessness and lack of access to health care and education. Soros might invest up to $50 million in the project, which is intended to be profitable.

• Social network Twitter Inc. plans to discontinue its little-used buy button, according to media reports.

• Daimler Financial Services, a unit of Daimler AG, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, announced it is buying PayCash Europe SA and will rebrand it as “Mercedes pay.”

• Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) renewed a payment services agreement with BBVA Compass to process the bank’s consumer, commercial, and small-business credit card portfolios.

• Wireless-payments specialist Apriva announced it and parking-payments company Metric Parking completed the EMV integration and certification process for all four major U.S. card brands.

• Shift4 Corp. said an EMV-certified point-of-sale service jointly offered by software developer TAM Retail is now available.

• Bluefin Payment Systems announced that its PayConex Payment Platform achieved EMV certification with processor Elavon.

• Point-of-sale equipment maker Star Micronics said its Star Cloud Services subsidiary and Thirdshelf, a loyalty-marketing specialist, are working together.

• The U.K.-based International Forecourt Standard Forum, the technical body of international oil companies and petroleum retailers and suppliers that promotes industry interconnectivity and communication standards, said the Smart Payment Association, a Germany-based trade group of smart card manufacturers and related companies, became a partner organization in the IFSF.

• Point-of-sale developer PointOS named Dylan Penebre as its chief executive. Penebre, according to his LinkedIn profile, previously worked at Cayan.