Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• The number of merchants accepting chip cards increased to 1.4 million as of April 30, according to new data from MasterCard Inc. That’s a 17% increase from 1.2 million MasterCard reported in March. MasterCard also says 68% of all U.S.-issued MasterCard-branded consumer credit cards have an EMV chip. The card brand reported 67% in its previous report. MasterCard also announced it is working with other payment networks, acquirers, and processors on a standard to speed checkout times with EMV cards based on its M/Chip Fast technology.
• Terminal maker Ingenico Group said it had recently implemented point-to-point encryption in all 80-plus U.S. and Canadian stores belonging to outdoors retailer Cabela’s Inc.
• PayPal Holdings Inc. said customers using older versions of its mobile app for Android and Apple Inc.’s iOS devices must upgrade to the new version 6.0 between June 3 and June 30; PayPal will discontinue its mobile apps for Windows Phone, Blackberry and Amazon Fire devices on June 30, but users of those apps can still access PayPal through the mobile Web. Recent Gartner Inc. research estimates that 84.1% of smart-phone sales in the first quarter were Android devices compared with 14.8% for iOS and less than 1% each for devices using all other operating systems.
• Accounting-software provider FreshBooks released the FreshBooks Card Reader for Android. It released an iOS version earlier this year.
• In an email notice to customers, Sports Authority, the bankrupt sporting goods and clothing retailer that is about to begin liquidation sales, said it stopped accepting its private-label credit card May 25, the same day its League loyalty program expired. The 463-store chain, which reportedly has $92.5 million in gift cards outstanding, will honor the cards through June 28 but no longer is selling new ones.
• Medical-payments processor InstaMed launched an update to its Estimator solution, which allows providers to estimate and collect patient payments.
• Align Commerce, a startup that uses the blockchain alongside wire and treasury-management rails to process international transactions, said it has taken out insurance to safeguard users against losses resulting from data breaches or operational errors or omissions.
