Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Clearent LLC announced the acquisition of Wintac, a software developer for the residential contractor industry. Wintac will become part of FieldEdge, a Clearent subsidiary. Terms were not disclosed.Payments provider Priority Technology Holdings Inc. has completed a previously announced sale of its RentPayment business to real-estate technology provider MRI Software. Priority will continue to …

Priority Technology Holdings and its Priority Payments Systems and Priority Commercial Payments units are working with business-to-business credit provider Behalf Inc. to allow Priority clients to finance purchases at checkout through Behalf rather than through cash, check, or credit card. The move comes as many small businesses continue to contend with …

The impact of the economic downturn sparked by the coronavirus pandemic has affected payments of all sorts, but perhaps none so much as consumer bill payments. Indeed, some 56% of consumers said it was harder to pay bills because they’d lost their jobs or had sustained a reduction in income, …

Online purchases using installment credit will total $680 billion globally in 2025, up 92% from $353 billion last year, projects Kaleido Intelligence.In related news, point-of-sale installment lender Laybuy launched a partner program to help smaller retailers offer the credit. More than 6,000 merchants offer Laybuy.MetaBank N.A., a unit of Meta Financial Group Inc., …

Payments provider Paya Inc. has signed an agreement to acquire The Payment Group (TPG), a provider of integrated payments to utilities and government. TPG’s software allows consumers to digitally pay their court and utility bills. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in October, were not disclosed. As …

As small businesses prepare for the holiday shopping season in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Visa Inc. announced it is launching programs and resources to support their efforts, including so-called Visa Street Teams that visit stores to provide point-of-sale materials to support contactless payments.In related news, Visa said 60% of U.S. …

Sam’s Club, the warehouse-retail arm of Walmart Inc., is bringing its Scan & Go self-checkout technology to more than 500 Sam’s Club fuel stations. Called Scan & Go Fuel, the mobile-payment service will enable consumers to make contactless payments using the Sam’s Club app at 518 Sam’s Club locations by …

Real-time payment flows are coming to processor settlements with merchants as Visa Inc. enlarges the market for its Visa Direct push-payment service. The latest development emerged this week with EVO Payments Inc.’s launch of EVO Direct Deposit, a service that relies on Visa Direct to credit U.S. merchant accounts. The …

Point-of-sale credit provider Affirm Inc. said it raised $500 million in a series G funding round. Lead investors were GIC and Durable Capital Partners LP. Affirm also introduced an interest-free biweekly payment product for transactions of as little as $50. It also announced that NutriBullet, a small-appliance maker, offers Affirm as a payment …

Convenience-store operators wanting another way to accept payments for lottery games have a decoupled-debit option with the launch of the BuyLottoNow program. The program, provided by iVertical Payment Network LLC, Boca Raton, Fla., charges no fees to merchants, but charges consumers 30 cents per transaction. Consumers enroll a checking account …

PureWrist, a contactless-transaction technology provider, on Thursday debuted PureWrist Go, a reloadable flexible bracelet with an embedded EMV chip that allows consumers to make prepaid contactless transactions. PureWrist GO, which retails for $25, plus the amount preloaded on to device, is the flagship product on the PureWrist platform. New York …

VSoft Corp., a provider of digital-banking and payment solutions to financial institutions, on Wednesday launched the Bread network, a peer-to-peer, consumer-to-business, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business payment network.  Bread enables real-time payments between financial institutions within its network. Money sent and money received is kept within the users’ respective financial-institution accounts, as …

As workers struggle with cash-flow issues that in some cases were worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, banks and fintechs are working to get wages into employees’ hands faster—sometimes in real time. Two such developments emerged this week from Square Inc. and Immediate Solutions Inc., a company that specializes in speeding …

Beauty-products marketer Avon International has recruited payments provider Apexx Global to process consumer payments to Avon representatives across global markets. Apexx supports credit and debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Android Pay as well as local payment methods.As the holiday shopping season nears, 39% of merchants surveyed by PayPal Holdings Inc. plan to sell …

Human-initiated cybercrime attacks in the United States and Canada decreased 6% in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, finds the biannual Cybercrime Report from LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Even automated bot attacks dipped—by 0.3%—in the period. But, as with all things related to online fraud, …

Payments provider Payroc Intermediate Holdings LLC has acquired technology provider Blackline Partners LLC, which does business as eConduit. Blackline provides a Web-based API by which software companies can enable clients to accept EMV payments.Visa Canada launched Click to Pay in that country. Click to Pay is based on the EMV Secure Remote Commerce standard for …

Stimulus-check fraud is on the rise, says Advanced Fraud Solutions, a High Point, N.C.-based provider of fraud-mitigation tools. Of 1 million checks screened by AFS, 41,000 have been identified as fraudulent, the company says. Legitimate checks were issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury starting in March as part …

With consumer demand for personalized digital experiences growing, NCR Corp. announced Monday it is integrating Kasisto Inc.’s KAI digital experience platform in its digital-banking platform. Kasisto’s KAI platform uses automated conversational banking technology to interact with consumers through digital channels in a human-like way. This allows banks to deploy intelligent, …

Momentum behind a standard for the exchange of consumers’ financial data between fintech apps and banks gained strength Monday with an announcement that a trade group supporting the standard has added 39 members since April. The group, the Reston, Va.-based Financial Data Exchange LLC, now claims a membership of 140 firms, …

Cash ATM withdrawals were down 14.6% for the week ending Sept. 6 among credit unions serviced by PSCU. The credit union service organization’s weekly transaction trends report found that while down, the rate is better than the 21.8% average decrease for the past four weeks.Co-Op Financial Services said an alliance with debit …