Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Issuer and acquirer American Express Co. said its global third-quarter discount rate—what merchants pay to accept the brand’s credit cards—was 2.39%, a slight increase from 2.38% a year ago. The uptick comes more than a year after AmEx said it would shave its worldwide discount rate in an effort to boost …

Payments and retail-technology provider Shopify Inc. announced it has closed on its acquisition of 6 River Systems Inc., a developer of cloud-based software and mobile robots for fulfillment. Terms were not announced.Fast Park, which operates parking garages near airports, announced it will accept credit and debit cards exclusively for payment at all …

With a proxy fight looming, vending-machine payments provider USA Technologies Inc. announced late Thursday that chief executive Stephen P. Herbert has resigned. Herbert, a former Pepsi-Cola executive, spent 23 years with Malvern, Pa.-based USAT, including eight as CEO. USAT’s board of directors named one of its members, Donald W. Layden …

John Newton – Vice President of Sales, Strategic Partnership Channel, First American Payment Systems If one-to-many isn’t part of your ISO’s growth strategy, it should be. The days of selling on price and free equipment are in the rearview mirror. Product parity has leveled the playing field, with market compression …

PayPal Holdings Inc. has made no secret of its push to generate revenue from its highly popular—but free—Venmo peer-to-peer payment service. Its latest gambit came to light early Thursday with the news that long-time finance partner Synchrony Financial will issue a Venmo credit card for the U.S. market starting the …

Galileo Financial Technologies, a 19-year-old developer of application programming interfaces for payments, announced a $77 million institutional funding round led by venture-capital firm Accel.Flowhub Holdings Inc., provider of a management platform for cannabis retailers, announced a Series A funding round whose participants included Iqram Magdon-Ismail, the co-founder and former CEO …

Rental payments are the top use case by far on the Zelle person-to-person payments network, according to the chief executive of Zelle provider Early Warning Services LLC. “From an end-user use-case perspective, far and away the No. 1 use case for Zelle right now is actually a rent payment,” Albert …

There’s little doubt that Apple Inc.’s Apple Card has stirred plenty of publicity before and since its Aug. 20 launch. And it enjoys the backing not just of Apple but of investment-banking giant Goldman Sachs, the card’s issuer. But is it “the most successful credit card launch ever?” That claim …

Twenty-one percent of consumers used a mobile app to pay a bill in 2019’s first quarter, up from 19% in the year-earlier period, according to a survey of more than 3,000 consumers by ACI Worldwide Inc. Meanwhile, 28% used a paper check, down from 32% a year earlier, according to the ACI …

Two senior Federal Reserve officials said Tuesday they are committed to rolling out the proposed FedNow real-time payments service as quickly as possible, but they didn’t say the original schedule calling for a launch in 2023 or even 2024 will be shortened. “We will be making every effort, I think, to …

With same-day transaction growth sizzling, the automated clearing house network overall notched another quarter of robust growth. The system logged 6.2 billion transactions in the quarter ended Sept. 30, up 9.5% over the third quarter of 2018, according to figures released Tuesday by Nacha, the network’s governing body. Total payment …

Days after launching services that allow users to make international remittances and use a virtual prepaid card for payments, Samsung Electronics Co. launched Samsung POS, an app that it says will let merchants accept near-field communication payments on their mobile devices. Developed with payments-technology firm Mobeewave, Samsung POS is aimed at micro-merchants and other small …

In the face of multiple defections so far, Facebook Inc.’s controversial cryptocurrency project scored a victory of sorts Monday when 21 remaining backers officially signed on at a crucial meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. In a busy day, the companies making up the Libra Association signed on to the project’s charter, …

The honeymoon is over between vending-machine payments provider USA Technologies Inc. and its largest investor, which on Monday accused the company’s board of directors of “value-destructive conduct” and blasted its top brass for “lack of management qualifications or accountability.” The surly announcement by New York City-based hedge fund Hudson Executive …

Cubic Corp.’s Cubic Transportation Systems unit agreed to integrate contactless transit cards with Alphabet Inc.’s Google Pay mobile-payments app. The integration will begin with contactless payment systems for transit in London, Miami, and New York.BMW, General Motors, Ford, Renault, and Honda will reportedly begin testing a blockchain-based in-car identification and payment system next month …

Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., merchant processor Stripe Inc. and online marketplace eBay Inc. said Friday afternoon they will not join the Facebook-backed Libra cryptocurrency project. The defections came a week after PayPal Holdings Inc. became the first of the Libra Association’s 28 tentative members to withdraw in the face of …

Payments companies drove merger-and-acquisition activity in the financial-technology sector in 2019’s first nine months, according to a new analysis. Payments firms were involved in four of the top 10 deals tracked by New York City-based investment bank Berkery Noyes Securities LLC. The value of the payments mergers totaled $94.1 billion, …

Facebook Inc. and its proposed Libra cryptocurrency may have stolen the headlines lately, but in the background companies are working to make cryptocurrency like Bitcoin easier to buy and sell by deploying specialized kiosks and simplifying what can seem to outsiders a quite abstruse payment process. One of the most …

Payments provider Fattmerchant launched an online-reviews integration feature, which provides merchants the ability to view and respond to reviews, such as those on Google, within the Fattmerchant platform.Aiming at hourly workers, a startup called Branch launched a free digital checking account and a debit card through Evolve Bank & Trust and Mastercard Inc.Cybersecurity firm GM …

The holidays are approaching, and with that annual shopping frenzy comes a yearly boost in gift card sales. As it turns out, though, most gift cards are likely to be plastic or paper rather than digital, according to consumer and small-business research released Thursday. While preference for digital cards is growing, …