Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Like many industries, the open-loop prepaid card segment of payments has absorbed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the results may not be as harsh as for some other segments in payments. That’s one assessment from Mercator Advisory Group’s 17th Annual U.S. Open-Loop Prepaid Cards Market Forecast 2020-2024 Part …

Among the hardships some consumers are bearing these days, rent payments can loom large. This week, a housing-payments startup called Xspaced and payments provider Dwolla Inc. launched a feature that allows tenants to split rent payments into anywhere from two to four installments each month without accruing interest. Landlords still …

The global contactless payment market is forecasted to reach $4.6 trillion by 2027, up 338% from $1.05 trillion in 2019, said Precedence Research. The market is predicted to have a compound annual growth rate of 20.01% from 2020 to 2027.Concord Acquisition Corp., which has been formed to acquire or otherwise combine with payments and …

With merchant demand for contactless payments rising fast in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, Verizon Communications Inc. announced Thursday its Verizon Business unit will begin offering Fiserv Inc.’s Clover Flex mobile point-of-sale device to its business customers. The deal gives Verizon clients access to Fiserv’s merchant services for online, mobile, …

In the midst of a boom in online commerce, one of the biggest e-commerce transaction processors globally has agreed to support both a Visa Inc. service that masks users’ card credentials and a streamlined online checkout technology offered by all four major card networks. FIS Inc. said Thursday its Worldpay processing …

Fiserv Inc. said CB&S Bank is the 500th financial institution added to the Zelle network via the processor. Zelle is the person-to-person payments service from Early Warning Services LLC.DaVinci Payments and North Lane Technologies (formerly Wirecard North America) jointly announced the completion of a previously announced merger. The combined business will operate …

Cardtronics plc, a leading non-bank ATM deployer, has been tendered an offer by Hudson Executive Capital and Apollo Global Management for its outstanding shares of stock at $31 per share in cash.  Cardtronics, which operates more than 270,000 ATMs, has a less than 10% share of the global ATM business …

Merchants are looking for ways around the issues created by the Covid-19 pandemic, and this has been especially true for restaurants. That’s creating a wide range of opportunities for merchant-service firms. On Wednesday, Square Inc. said it has added DoorDash to Square Online as a delivery option for eateries and …

Sightline Payments, which provides payments for gaming companies, said it received an investment from private investment firm Searchlight Capital Partners. The amount was not disclosed. Also, Sightline cofounder and chief executive Kirk Sanford was replaced by Joe Pappano, Sightline president of Americas, who was appointed chief executive and a director …

InComm Payments announced Tuesday that its Visa-branded Vanilla Gift Cards can now be downloaded to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay mobile wallets, enabling the card to be used for contactless payments. It is the first open-loop Visa gift card to be supported on mobile wallets, InComm says. In …

Capital One Financial Corp. is barring all of its credit cards from being used for point-of-sale lending transactions, aside from the United Kingdom where buy now, pay later products are being reviewed for possible regulation. The move comes as overall buy now, pay later providers garner a lot of attention, …

Wells Fargo Co. said overall levels of optimism among small businesses remain at just more than half where they were late last year, even though its Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index rose 12 points for the second straight quarter in the latest period.As local governments imposed measures to control fresh outbreaks …

Less than a week after announcing its partnership with Cybersource, Houston-based P97 Networks Inc.’s plans to expand its PetroZone platform globally are coming into sharper focus.  P97 intends to leverage Cybersource’s gateway connections to more than 140 acquiring banks globally to expand its reach to petroleum retailers. The company will …

A relatively novel method for private companies to go public gained momentum in the payments industry Monday with the announcement that London-based processor Paysafe Group Holdings Ltd. will be acquired by a group put together by Las Vegas-based Foley Trasimene Acquisition Corp. in a deal valued at approximately $9 billion.  …

Overall U.S. credit card use dipped 2% for the week ending Nov. 29 compared with the week ending Dec. 1, 2019, according to the Tracking Transaction Trends report from PSCU, a credit union service organization. Meanwhile, debit card use increased 4.9% for the same period. Regionally, the largest credit card drop was …

It’s a hot time for buy now, pay later companies, especially when buyers come around. Affirm Inc. is buying Canadian rival PayBright Inc. and Alliance Data Systems Corp. completed its acquisition of Bread, the brand ran by Lon Operations LLC. Buy now, pay later specialist Affirm Inc. said it will acquire …

At UL, we have seen both customers and merchants are experiencing an increased need for contactless payment options in brick-and-mortar stores. The current pandemic is a large factor in this, of course, but so also is the convenience and speed that contactless payments bring when compared to the traditional contact …

Processor Stripe Inc. launched Stripe Treasury, a banking-as-a-service platform for its merchants, which can open Stripe Balance business accounts. Stripe is working with Evolve Bank & Trust on the service. Merchants can open interest-bearing accounts eligible for FDIC insurance in minutes. Commerce platform Shopify Inc. is one of the first to offer …

Houston-based P97 Networks Inc., a provider of cloud-based mobile-commerce technology, including pay-at-pump, has partnered with Cybersource, Visa Inc.’s fraud-management platform, to expand its PetroZone platform offering to fuel retailers both in North America and overseas. P97 has installations in 140 countries. PetroZone is an EMV-compliant application that enables mobile payment …

The Accredited Standards Committee X9 Inc. said it is seeking participants for a newly-formed a study group on faster and real-time payments. The ASC X9 develops national and international standards for the financial-services industry.Payments-technology provider Payfacto Payments Inc. has partnered with Community Federal Savings Bank to launch a merchant-acquiring unit for the U.S. market …