Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Looking to move further upmarket from the small sellers it started with, Square Inc. on Wednesday announced it is launching its Square Register point-of-sale system in Canada. Square is promoting the technology, which includes a screen facing the customer as well as one for the merchant, as suited to a …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to buy close to 75% of Volkswagen’s payments platform, operated by Volkswagen Payments S.A. Terms of the deal were not announced. The unit supports in-car payments and other services in 32 markets worldwide.Clickatell, an online chat provider, launched Chat 2 Pay, a service that enables …

Mastercard Inc. strengthened its hand in open banking on Monday, reaching an agreement to acquire European open-banking platform provider Aiia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to strengthen Mastercard’s position as a provider of open-banking services in Europe. Mastercard established a presence in the business …

North American payments processors are focusing lately on bulking up resources in Latin America, largely via acquisition. The latest example is Montreal-based Nuvei Corp., which on Tuesday said it has acquired Paymentez LLC, a 10-year-old payments provider that enables more than 80 payment methods in Mexico as well as 10 …

PopID, a consumer authentication service, said its PopPay payment service is used more than more 100 restaurant and retail brands. Approximately 70,000 registered users have authenticated their faces more than 4 million times. PopID recently closed on a $10 million Series B funding round and intends to expand to college campuses across …

Vending-payment specialist Cantaloupe Inc. on Friday reported record revenue of $49 million for the June quarter, a 50.2% increase over the same period a year earlier, and a 14.6% increase from the same period in 2021.  Equipment revenue totaled $10.8 million during the quarter, a more than 100% increase from …

U.S. payments networks continue to cultivate their connections to what is for them a potentially massive market in China. In the latest development, Leshua Technology announced early Friday it will support acquiring for American Express Co.’s joint venture in China.  AmEx last year became the first foreign payments company to win …

Accelerated adoption of digital payments during the pandemic helped drive up biometric identity checks by a factor of 20 for ComplyCube in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2020, said the company, which specializes in anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer compliance.Park Place Payments said it signed with acquirer Payroc …

Zilch Technology Ltd. is preparing to become the latest entrant in the U.S. buy now, pay later market. The move hinges on the London-based company’s acquisition of San Francisco-based debt-funding platform Neptune Financial & Management Services LLC (NepFin), a deal Zilch announced on Thursday. The terms were not disclosed. The …

Giant pharmacy chain Walgreen Co. is getting into the banking and debit card business with the launch of Scarlet. Announced Thursday, Scarlet is a Mastercard-branded debit card issued by MetaBank. InComm Payments provides the system for the account. Scarlet works like most bank accounts and is designed to help accountholders …

U.S. consumers are spending $273 per month on subscription services on average, up 15% from the average in 2018, yet they estimate they are spending less, according to a poll from consulting firm West Monroe.Payments provider Nuvei Corp. completed its $250-million cash acquisition of SimplexCC Ltd., a cryptocurrency gateway that links exchanges, brokers, wallets, …

The Financial Data Exchange (FDX), a non-profit standards body for providers of open-banking and open-finance applications, announced on Wednesday that the number of consumer accounts using its application programming interface has swelled to 22 million, up from 16 million in April, an increase of more than one million accounts per …

Same-day transaction processing on the automated clearing house network will turn five years old this month, and while that may provide one reason for participants to celebrate, network governor Nacha issued another one Wednesday morning: both same-day transactions and same-day dollar volume are soaring. Transactions totaled 148.7 million in the …

Mercari, an online marketplace for second-hand goods, said consumers can use buy now, pay later services from Zip Co., formerly Quadpay, on its Web site.Buy now, pay later specialist Uplift Inc. said consumers who book with Sixthman, a music-festival organizer on cruise ships, can pay for their tickets in monthly installments. Sixthman is …

As part of its strategy to remove friction from automated bank transfers, Astra Inc., a provider of bank-to-bank transfer technology, is partnering with open-banking platform provider Plaid Inc. The partnership will make it easier for software developers to embed automated bank transfers into their applications by enabling them to use …

The emergence earlier this year of a virulent new coronavirus variant “threatens to reverse the gains made in the first six months of the year” by the U.S. restaurant industry, according to data released Tuesday by the National Restaurant Association. The news comes as eateries have adopted contactless forms of …

Apple Inc.’s App Store and the Google Play store will have to open their payments services to competing providers for in-app purchases in South Korea if a recently passed bill becomes law, reported The Wall Street Journal, which also said the president’s party endorsed the legislation. Apple, in particular, has been the …

The convenience-store chain Wawa Inc. announced Monday it settled a class-action lawsuit stemming from a data breach in 2019 that was related to malware discovered on its payment-processing servers. The settlement, which is subject to court approval, resolves all customer claims related to the data breach. The malware affected customer payment card information …

Buy now, pay later specialist Affirm Inc. late Friday announced it had clinched the e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. as a client, securing a source of enormous volume and sending its stock soaring Monday morning. The news follows the enablement in May of Affirm’s service for hundreds of thousands of U.S. merchants …

Visa Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. said they will donate a dime to New York Cares through the month of September, up to a limit of $250,000, for each tap riders perform with a Chase Visa contactless card on subways or buses operated by New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.VPay, …