Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Mastercard Inc. has abandoned its pursuit of cross-border specialist Earthport PLC and instead has agreed to acquire New York City-based Transfast Remittance LLC, a cross-border account-to-account money-transfer network. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in 2019’s second half, were not disclosed. Visa Inc. last month made an …

American vacationers flock every year to the scenic islands of the Caribbean, and some day they might be using a digital version of the East Caribbean dollar to pay for a Rum Punch or Ting With a Sting. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the monetary authority for the eight-country Eastern …

Cardlytics Inc. continues to ramp up its rewards platform to accommodate an expected tens of millions of new users coming from new big-bank clients, but revenue growth will lag customer growth for some time, company executives signaled this week. Atlanta-based Cardlytics’s main product, Cardlytics Direct, provides merchant-funded offers to consumers …

Could the price of Bitcoin be headed back up into the stratosphere? One noted analyst is saying it’s a distinct possibility. Based on what he sees as recurring patterns in the cryptocurrency’s pricing history, Michael Graham says Bitcoin could be starting its upward climb now toward the neighborhood of $20,000, …

PayActiv Inc. will use the Visa Direct platform from Visa Inc. to offer real-time deposits of earned funds to its clients’ employees. The funds can be loaded onto a Visa debit or reloadable prepaid card. PayActiv also launched its own Visa-branded general-purpose reloadable prepaid card. Testing lab Q-Card Co. said …

Fewer consumers fell victim to payment card fraud in 2018, but fraud victims picked up more of the financial losses, according to Javelin Strategy & Research’s latest annual identity-fraud study. Based on the results of its 16th annual identity-fraud study, Javelin estimates that payment-related fraud affected 14.4 million consumers last …

Observers of the U.S. payments market who have been expecting a surge in conversions to dual-interface cards may have been disappointed Wednesday morning as CPI Card Group Inc., one of the nation’s biggest card manufacturers, said it expects “dual interface to grow gradually as a proportion of the U.S. market” …

Payments provider Payroc LLC announced it acquired Detrok Technology Services, a developer of technology for point-of-sale, payment, and other functions in the hospitality industry. Terms were not disclosed. Payments provider Powertranz said it and NCR Corp. integrated the Powertranz software development kit and payment gateway into the NCR Aloha point-of-sale …

Criminals figured out in 2018 how to really frustrate retailers. They automated their bots to create high-volume attacks against online merchants, finds the ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report: H2 2018. Released Tuesday by ThreatMetrix, an anti-fraud company purchased by LexisNexis Risk Solutions last year, the report finds there were 5.5 billion bot …

Backers of near-field communication technology for mobile payments made it plain on Tuesday they’re ready to fight back against quick-response codes, a rival technology that has won support not only from giant systems like China’s Alipay and WeChat Pay but also domestically from merchant apps from big chains like Walmart …

Fleetcor Technologies Inc., a business-to-business payments provider, said it has agreed to acquire Nvoicepay Inc., a provider of accounts-payable technology. Terms were not disclosed. Private-equity firm Napier Park Financial Partners invested $10 million in Nvoicepay in 2016. Mobile point-of-sale specialist CardFlight Inc. said its SwipeSimple product now includes the ability …

While a handful of states and cities are passing laws requiring retailers to accept cash, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United, will go completely cashless March 10. Stadium management announced the new policy Monday, and it takes effect with Atlanta …

The road to payment automation hasn’t been an easy one, with many organizations still battling outdated payment processes and exposing themselves to unnecessary costs, inefficiencies, and payment-fraud risks. Some organizations are still working with manual, costly, and fraud-prone paper based accounts-payable processes, while others have started down the path of …

The Electronic Transactions Association joined seven other financial trade groups in opposing a Republican-backed bill in the House of Representatives that would levy a 5% tax on cross-border money transfers to fund President Trump’s proposed border wall. Introduced in January by U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., H.R. 85 would require …

Payments company i3 Verticals Inc. announced the acquisition of two unnamed companies at a combined price of approximately $20 million. One is in the public sector and the other is in wireless Internet-service billing. Countering the impression that most users of digital-payments services skew younger, half of first-time person-to-person payment …

The Kroger Co. on Friday opened a new front in its battle with Visa Inc. over acceptance costs with an announcement that it will stop accepting Visa credit cards at its Smith’s Food & Drug Stores chain, which operates 134 stores in seven Western states. The ban is set to …

With its pending $750 million acquisition of The Western Union Co.’s bill-pay subsidiary Speedpay Inc., payment-software and processing provider ACI Worldwide Inc. will gain control of a profitable operation that made a name for itself in expedited payments. “Speedpay invented the expedited-payments market,” says Richard K. Crone, chief executive of …

Business-services firm Accenture invested in and formed an alliance with P97 Networks Inc., a cloud-based mobile-commerce firm specializing in automotive. As part of the agreement, Accenture will develop products from P97 for its clients. P97’s PetroZone service is installed at more than 20,000 U.S. filling stations. Terms of the investment …

ACI Worldwide has agreed to lay out $750 million in cash to buy Speedpay Inc., the digital bill-payment business that has been part of The Western Union Co. for 17 years. The deal, announced early Thursday, will bulk up ACI’s bill-payment processing business at a time when trends like digital …

NetCents Technology Inc. said it signed a 5-year reseller agreement with an undisclosed independent sales organization. The ISO will bundle NetCents’ gateway and cryptocurrency acceptance into its offerings. The Electronic Transactions Association and Worldpay are bringing 10 startup companies to the ETA’s annual Transact conference. The 10 companies, part of …