Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Boku Inc. launched what it says is the world’s largest mobile-payments network. The M1ST Payments Network reaches 5.7 billion mobile-payment accounts in 90 countries and offers more than 330 payment methods, the company says.Global payments provider Adyen NV said Just Eat Takeaway.com, an online food-delivery marketplace, will issue its prefunded Takeaway Pay Card …

With the popularity of the buy now, pay later alternative growing, especially for online purchases, PayPal Holdings Inc. announced Tuesday it will no longer charge late fees for missed payments on its installment products in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, effective Oct. 1. PayPal has already eliminated …

Carat, Fiserv Inc.’s digital payout service, has broadened the number of accounts payments can be sent to with the addition of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Venmo. Carat payouts already can be sent to a credit or debit card, via automated clearing house to a bank account, to a prepaid card, …

Visa Inc. rolled out its buy now, pay later application programming interface technology to allow merchants to integrate the BNPL functionality more quickly. Visa is working with payments provider i2c in the rollout.In related news, buy now, pay later specialist Klarna AB announced it has launched in Poland with H&M, a Sweden-based clothing …

The story of debit cards in the pandemic year of 2020 turns out to have several chapters—including higher average tickets, a sharp swing to card-not-present usage, a dramatic surge in contactless adoption, and higher mobile-wallet usage. Meanwhile, account-to-account transfers turned out to be the fastest-growing form of debit, though usage …

Building on a strategy of growing share of payments in the unattended retail market, Cantaloupe Inc. announced Tuesday its acquisition of Delicious Nutritious LLC, a Los Angeles-based micro-market payments company that operates under the trade name of Yoke Payments. The purchase price was not disclosed. The deal gives Cantaloupe, which earlier this …

The overall costs of phishing attacks on businesses have nearly quadrupled since 2015, rising from average losses of $3.8 million per company in 2015 to $14.8 million in 2021, according to research from cybersecurity and compliance company Proofpoint Inc. and Ponemon Institute.Uplift Inc., a buy now, pay later provider specializing in travel, …

Responding to consumers’ growing use of digital options for bill payment, ACI Worldwide Inc. announced Monday that it is integrating PayPal and Venmo acceptance into its Speedpay bill-payment service.  The Monroe County Water Authority, which provides water to hundreds of thousands of customers over parts of six counties in the …

Open banking has been a big trend in payments for some time, and now traditional payment processors are getting in on the action. Paysafe Group Holdings Ltd. early on Monday announced it has agreed to pay $441 million to acquire Miami-based SafetyPay, a 15-year-old provider of digital payments for cash-paying …

Mastercard Inc. said it will slowly phase out the requirement that its branded cards have a magnetic stripe in favor of the EMV chip. Beginning in 2024, in most markets, newly issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to bear the magstripe. By 2033, Mastercard said none of …

With consumer use of mobile wallets growing, supermarket chain Giant Eagle, Inc. is adding PayPal and Venmo acceptance at checkout in its 474 Giant Eagle supermarkets and GetGo convenience stores. The move, announced Thursday, furthers PayPay Holdings Inc.’s efforts to capture in-store transactions through its mobile wallet. PayPal began its …

Western Union Business Solutions (WUBS), formerly a unit of the Western Union group of companies, will rename itself Convera upon its recently announced $910-million acquisition by Goldfinch Partners LLC and The Baupost Group LLC. Patrick Gauthier, most recently head of Amazon Pay, has been announced as chief executive of Convera, which …

When talking about crypto exchanges, it’s common to divide them into the big, stable, safe, reliable ones on the one hand, and the little, unknown, shady, and suspicious ones on the other. However, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s financial regulator, seems not to have a very high opinion …

In response to small and mid-size businesses’ need for capital as the economy re-opens in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, payment-technology provider Veem Inc. on Thursday introduced two new short-term lending options as part of its Veem Capital offering. The first option, Pay Later, allows small and mid-size businesses …

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday lent its weight to a proposed rule from the Federal Reserve Board that would reinforce merchants’ choice of networks for e-commerce transactions arising from debit cards. At the same time, it suggested the rule could be made more stringent. Justice’s support for the …

EBay Inc. reported some 80% of its on-platform payments volume was processed through its managed-payments service by the end of the second quarter. More than 13 million sellers globally were using the platform.Payment card manufacturer CPI Card Group Inc. said consumers’ shift to contactless cards, which command a higher price than ordinary plastic, helped drive …

Vehicle-based payments got a boost Wednesday with BlackBerry Ltd.’s introduction of a new app to enable secure payments from a car’s dashboard. The app, which leverages the concept of the connected car, acts like a mobile wallet that connects to a payment network to enable a variety of transactions, including …

With a Federal Reserve deadline hitting Wednesday for comments on decade-old debit card regulations, large merchants are firing some last-minute salvos in hopes of influencing the Fed to make major revisions to rules governing transaction routing and pricing. “[M]ajor banks and networks continue to interfere with competition for debit business,” …

Cloud-based point-of-sale maker Revel Systems said Dave’s Hot Chicken restaurant chain will use Revel Enterprise for its POS system. In the first quarter, the chain said its newly signed franchisees expanded the number of locations to more than 400.Payments provider Qualpay said it will process transactions for FuelMor, a software platform for propane suppliers.Buy …

Paymentus Holdings Inc., a provider of cloud-based bill-payment technology, announced Tuesday it has agreed to acquire Payveris LLC, a digital money-movement platform, in a deal valued at $152.2 million. Paymentus will pay 56% of the purchase price in cash and the remainder in Paymentus Class A common stock. The acquisition …