Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• By the end of August American Express Co. will not hold merchants liable for counterfeit fraud chargebacks for transactions under $25 as part of its updated U.S. fraud policies for EMV chargebacks. By the end of 2016, AmEx plans to limit the number of counterfeit fraud chargebacks to 10 per card account. The card issuer will bear the liability for additional chargebacks after 10. AmEx said more than 40% of its counterfeit fraud chargebacks in the U.S. are for transactions under $25. The changes mirror those recently announced by Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc.
• Payment-service provider Processing.com announced private-equity firm LaSalle Capital has acquired an interest in the company. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.
• NetCents Technology Inc., an online-payments provider that leverages blockchain technology, announced it is integrating with PayPal Holdings Inc.’s platform. The integration is expected to take two to three weeks.
• Seven financial institutions around the world–Santander, UniCredit, UBS, ReiseBank, CIBC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, and ATB Financial—have adopted Ripple’s distributed-ledger technology to speed up cross-border payments.
• Online payments processor Stripe Inc. has been rolling out its Atlas program over the past three months and now has 440 startup companies from 91 countries enrolled, with a growing waiting list, according to Bloomberg. Atlas helps foreign startups incorporate in the United States, after which they may or may not use Stripe for payments acceptance, though the company figures most will.
• Payments provider MainStream Merchant Services Inc. announced a partnership with iPad-based point-of-sale system developer Revel Systems.
• Computer maker Acer Service Corp. informed the California Attorney General’s office that hackers broke into its online store and over the course of nearly a year stole credit card data, customer names, and addresses for 34,500 customers in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada.
• Accela, a vendor of citizen-engagement software for government, launched CivicPay on its Accela Civic Platform. The new service allows citizens to pay government agencies online in real time.
• Payments company National Merchants Association named Butch Hildebrand as director of sales. The company intends to double its headquarters staff to almost 200 employees by the end of the year, with expectations to top 300 by the end of 2017.
• Investment bank Financial Technology Partners named Stephen Stout, former global head of strategy at First Data Corp., as managing director in its New York City Office.
