Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

American Express Co. said its Kabbage unit now offers Kabbage Checking to U.S. small businesses. AmEx also said it now offers Kabbage Funding to small businesses with lines of credit ranging from $1,000 to $150,000.Global Payments Inc. has launched a point-of-sale application that operates on commercially-available, off-the-shelf mobile phones, reported The Paypers …

Widespread theft of online data is driving businesses to seek out alternatives to passwords and usernames for sensitive information, a demand that led point-of-sale device provider MagTek Inc. to develop technology that helps lock up data while taking the company into a new and broader market, which includes medical data, …

Consumers are increasingly turning to online banking as their only method of banking, says a recent study from J.D. Power. In 2020, the number of consumers that only bank online grew 11%. Overall, 41% of consumers in the United States are digital-only banking customers.   The online channel has also become a …

Payments provider Adyen NV announced the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has approved the company’s application for a federal foreign branch in San Francisco. The Federal Reserve granted its approval in May. Adyen says the U.S. branch license will allow its single platform to scale and introduce more services for …

The Covid-19 pandemic has helped fuel consumer adoption of mobile-banking apps by 67% of retail bank customers in the United States, up seven percentage points from 2020. And now no significant drop in consumer usage of these apps is expected as Covid-19 restrictions ease, says the J.D. Power 2021 U.S. Banking …

Bank of America Corp.’s decision to introduce fast payouts to consumer accounts globally brings a major financial institution into a market that is attracting increasing interest from an array of payments providers. Pressure for such services has grown more intense with the growth of the gig economy and recent needs …

Fresha, a platform that enables consumers to book and pay for beauty and wellness appointments, received a $100-millon Series C investment led by General Atlantic.BitPay Inc. is processing transactions allowing users to spend cryptocurrency with Shells, a provider of cloud-based virtual desktop operating systems.The city of South Haven, Mich., has launched …

Heeding years-long requests from merchants for a solution to simplify sales-tax compliance, Stripe Inc. on Thursday introduced Stripe Tax, an application that allows merchants to automatically calculate and collect sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), and goods-and-services tax (GST) in the United States and more than 30 other countries. Spurring the need …

With e-commerce sales booming, payments players are looking for combinations that can keep online customers engaged and add even more buyers to their ranks.  An example emerged Thursday morning as Shopify Inc. and Affirm Inc. announced Affirm’s buy now, pay later service is now available to “hundreds of thousands” of U.S. …

Buy now, pay later provider Uplift Inc. said its service has been integrated with Vegas.com, a travel site.In related news, buy now, pay later provider Splitit said its service is now available on the ChargeAfter platform, which offers merchants a variety of consumer financing methods.Mastercard Inc. said it has closed on its $850-million acquisition of Ekata …

Soon, there might be just two states that prohibit credit card surcharging with the passage Tuesday of a bill in Colorado that would permit the pricing strategy. The bill, SB21-091, passed both the Colorado House and Senate and now moves to Governor Jared Polis’s desk. He has 30 days to …

Consumer spending has now been recovering for a full year from the impact of Covid-19, according to a report released on Wednesday by Visa Inc. The card network’s U.S. Spending Momentum Index, which it began releasing publicly last month, registered a reading of 123.3 for May. That number indicates 59% …

A survey from Fast, an online checkout provider, found that 86% of U.S. shoppers have abandoned an online shopping cart. Of the 1,004 consumers surveyed earlier this month, 55% said they would be more likely to make an online purchase if there was a quicker, easier way to buy directly from …

The trend toward providing merchants technology that unites their digital and physical payments acceptance and allows them to manage their operations from a single platform got another boost Tuesday with Israel-based Wix.com Inc.’s introduction of Wix POS. The solution allows merchants to accept in-store and online payments, including contactless and chip …

One way to boost mobile-wallet usage for functions like payments is to more tightly integrate the apps into users’ daily lives. Apple Inc. followed that script with its preview on Monday of an update for watchOS8, the brains behind its Apple Watch.  This fall, the refresh will allow users to …

PayNearMe, which enables cash payments as well as card, ACH, Apple Pay, and Google Pay payments, said its customers will be able to complete bill payment transactions at participating Walmart Inc. locations beginning in August. The deal is through a partnership with Green Dot Corp.Member Driven Technologies, a credit union …

As part of its strategy to create an all-encompassing platform for merchants and their suppliers, Lightspeed POS Inc. on Monday announced the acquisition of two companies: Ecwid Inc., a consumer e-commerce platform, and NuOrder Inc., an e-commerce platform for suppliers, for a combined $925 million in cash and equity in …

Pundits have predicted for months that cash acceptance will decline markedly as consumers rush into electronic payments. But sellers view cash as a less-expensive option for them, and some payments providers are looking to cater to that view. On Monday, VizyPay LLC said it is opening its cash-discount app to …

Point-of-sale developer SpotOn introduced SpotOn Sidekick, a handheld POS-acceptance device designed specifically for food trucks, pop-up dining, cafes, and other mobile food kitchens. Pricing was not disclosed.Visa Inc. said banking giant Goldman Sachs will deploy Visa’s B2B Connect and Visa Direct Payouts platforms to speed cross-border business-to-consumer and business-to-business payments for Goldman client …

From a merchant perspective, one of the most harmful features of today’s card networks is default pricing. One merchant advocate succinctly described the anti-competitive impact of default pricing, stating, “with default pricing, banks have no incentive to compete for merchants’ business.”  Today, individual merchants are forced to face off against …