Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• Punchh, provider of mobile loyalty systems for restaurants, has introduced a chatbot that allows customers to “converse” with dining clients on Facebook Messenger, Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa, and other platforms. Punchh says the chatbot integrates “quickly and easily” with existing point-of-sale, loyalty, and ordering programs.
• Royal Bank of Canada said its customers that have Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad tablet can now initiate money transfers through voice commands using Apple’s Siri technology and RBC’s newly updated mobile app; the system sends money through the e-Transfer service from Interac, Canada’s debit network.
• Visa Inc. said its annual Everywhere Initiative, which focuses on stimulating innovation in payments, will focus this year on female entrepreneurship with a live-pitch competition on Saturday featuring women-led startups using Visa’s application programming interfaces to help merchants. The winner will receive $25,000 and the chance to run a pilot program with Visa.
• FICO, a provider of financial risk-scoring tools, predicts that the U.S. rollout of EMV will continue to be “slow and often confusing for consumers” for the foreseeable future, particularly with gas stations not required to install chip readers at their pumps until Oct. 1, 2020.
• Prepaid card program manager Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc. expanded its loyalty and rewards offerings to include foreign currencies and languages to suit demand from international organizations that want to motivate consumers and employees.
• Prepaid card program manager CashStar announced client and partner growth in 2016 resulting in almost $2 billion in gross merchant load value.
