Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Fully 25% of U.S. merchants that accept payment cards experienced a drop of 56% or more in card volume in April compared with February, finds a new study from The Strawhecker Group. After analyzing billions of transactions from more than 1 million card-accepting merchants across the United States, the Omaha, …

Visa Inc. appointed Chris Newkirk as chief strategy officer, a newly created position in which he will lead strategic planning for Visa overall and work with Visa’s regional teams. Newkirk, who will report to chairman and CEO Al Kelly, comes to Visa from Capital One Financial Corp., where he held a …

Today’s technology empowers organizations to engage a global pool of customers. But this digital reach is often accompanied by increased scrutiny to ensure your organization remains compliant with the latest sanctions regulations. As regulators prioritize sanctions compliance, those who negate this responsibility are unnecessarily setting themselves on a potential collision …

Pundits have argued for weeks that the Covid-19 pandemic is shifting consumer payment habits away from anything that requires touching publicly available devices, and now that trend is showing up in that most mundane of activities, parking a car. To be sure, parking transactions even via a mobile app have …

After years of working with Internet firms and payments and tech companies to develop its authentication standards, the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance on Wednesday unveiled a Web site to familiarize consumers with its work and a symbol that indicates a Web site or device is using its technology. The …

In its first “State of Spend” report, loyalty platform provider Cardlytics Inc., which develops offers for customers of some of the nation’s largest banks based on transaction data, says spending on streaming services rose 24% year-over-year in the March 12-April 29 period.Digital-payments and banking-services provider i2c Inc. said it is supporting Crypto.com as …

Led by the removal of 30,000 ATMs in China, the number of ATMs worldwide fell by 15,000 units, or 0.5%, in 2019 to 3.23 million machines from 3.25 million in 2018, according to new findings from London-based research firm RBR. The United States and Canada also saw declines in their …

Looking to make their reloadable prepaid card more attractive as retailers and consumers alike deal with the uncertainty created by the coronavirus pandemic, Walmart Inc. and Green Dot Corp. on Tuesday said they are now offering a 2% rate on the Walmart MoneyCard’s associated savings account.  The rate is applicable …

ACI Worldwide Inc. said its real-time payments platform, UP Immediate Payments, has added application programming interfaces to ease integration with mobile wallets, e-commerce portals, bill-pay apps, social-media payments, and other applications.Payments provider Klarna AB said it has an agreement with musical-instrument maker Fender to provide a payment option offering four equal installments on …

A new report from CardFlight Inc., a point-of-sale technology provider serving more than 60,000 small businesses through its SwipeSimple service, shows merchant activity climbing back to just about where it was in early March when the Covid-19 outbreak began to hit the economy hard. Total sales in the SwipeSimple merchant …

Some results from Interac Corp. on Friday show the novel coronavirus and its attendant restrictions are pushing Canadian consumers and businesses toward digital payments, a trend the company says could have lasting effects. In April, e-Transfer transactions reached a record level at 61.3 million, according to the announcement from Interac, …

Point-of-sale lender LendingUSA LLC launched an instant ID-verification capability, which involves applicants using a smart phone to take and transmit photos of government-issued ID cards and selfie photos. The company says its merchant base exceeds 8,000 nationally.A startup called Skyflow said it has raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round aimed at developing …

Citcon USA LLC said Tulip Retail Inc., a provider of mobile apps used by store clerks at major retail chains, will deploy Citcon’s mobile-payments technology to enable acceptance of Alipay, WeChat Pay, and UnionPay QR. A 5-year-old startup company, Citcon specializes in enabling U.S. merchants to accept China-based mobile-payments apps. …

Debit card issuers have a new tool to spot potential false transaction declines with a new service from processor Fiserv Inc., and the authentication needs of mobile payments are driving, in part, the growth in fingerprint sensors. Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv says its new Authorization Lift service will help reduce the number …

Working with an unnamed partner, commerce platform Shopify Inc. said it will launch Shop Pay Installments later this year. The option will let consumers at checkout split purchases into four equal installments at no interest.In related news, point-of-sale installment lender PayBright said Canadian fashion retailer Groupe Dynamite is offering PayBright’s service on the merchant’s …

Forty-five percent of U.S. consumers are ordering online more often than usual as a result of restrictions stemming from Covid-19, and 34% are making more purchases with contactless or mobile-payment options, according to an online survey of 807 U.S. adults by Auriemma Group, a financial-services consulting firm. The firm also surveyed consumers …

Fiserv Inc. and the former head of an independent sales organization will pay $40.2 million to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission stemming from alleged illegal actions committed by the ISO from 2012 to 2014 while it obtained processing services from First Data Merchant Services, whose parent company …

With its merchant business under pressure because of the coronavirus pandemic, Square Inc. is yet again spying new opportunities for its consumer-facing Cash App, whose core feature is person-to-person payments. This time, Square is rolling out regularly scheduled purchases of Bitcoin and stocks for Cash App users. Square chief executive …

All four card brands have now delayed for the second time their EMV liability shifts for automated fuel dispensers with Mastercard Inc.’s Monday announcement it would postpone its shift until April 16. The original shift was to have taken place in October 2017, but was deferred until October 2020. Along …

In an effort to reach occasional and very small sellers struggling with restrictions imposed to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic, PayPal Holdings Inc. on Tuesday launched a Quick Response code capability for its mobile app. The feature allows a buyer to scan a QR code displayed by a seller …