Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Online marketplace Shopify Inc. says it will add Venmo as a payment option, MarketWatch reported. PayPal Holdings Inc., Venmo’s parent, has been promoting a Pay With Venmo service to encourage more users of Venmo, known chiefly as a peer-to-peer payment app, to rely on the service for online purchases. The …

Discover Financial Services’s lending operations dwarf its payments business, but payments nonetheless are an important component of the company’s growth strategy, new chief executive Roger C. Hochschild said Thursday. Hochschild, who joined Discover in 1998 and served as its president and chief operating officer for 14 years, this month succeeded …

In an online question-and-answer session with sellers, eBay Inc. said its new Managed Payments platform will add PayPal as a payment option by next summer. The new platform relies on payments provider Adyen as a gateway to a variety of payments options. E-commerce processor Shopify Inc. reported an operating loss …

Visa Inc. has been talking up contactless payments lately, though its executives and spokespersons usually dole out percentages rather than hard numbers to describe what is still a minuscule market in terms of card numbers and transaction volume. But chief executive Alfred F. Kelly gave an eyebrow-raising statistic Wednesday regarding …

Merchants should expect even more consumers to shop online this holiday shopping season. They also should expect even more fraud attempts. New research from Riskified, an Israel-based data-security provider, and cybersecurity firm IntSights finds that the number of false retailer Web sites meant to get consumers to give up their …

If the Federal Reserve decides to compete in the developing market for real-time payments, it will face considerable obstacles, one of which has to do with whether such competition is really needed, according to an official with The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC. The Clearing House, which is recruiting financial …

Fleet-fueling and corporate-payments provider WEX Inc. reported this week that it has a deal to acquire Noventis Inc., a bill-payment network and virtual card specialist. South Portland, Maine-based WEX said in a news release that it already has a “longstanding relationship” with Noventis as a supplier of virtual cards for …

Processor Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) said its Merchant Solutions unit processed 1.53 billion point-of-sale transactions in the third quarter, a 22% increase from 1.26 billion a year earlier. Sales volume rose 30% to $40.9 billion. The Consumer Solutions segment, which includes the Netspend prepaid card operation, posted gross dollar …

The Zelle person-to-person payment service continued to gain traction in the third quarter. Zelle Network reported Tuesday that it processed $32 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30 on 116 million transactions. The latest figures represent a year-over-year growth rate of 67% in payment value and 83% in transactions. …

With a major new—and somewhat controversial—e-commerce standard now entering a 45-day comment phase, the payments industry is likely to have at least some “commercial applications” ready by early spring, the top executive in charge of Visa Inc.’s implementation tells Digital Transactions News. The specification, known as Secure Remote Commerce, has …

Electronic Merchant Systems announced the acquisition of Total Touch POS, a POS system developer for the hospitality industry. Terms were not disclosed. Bank of America Merchant Services, along with First Data Corp., announced it integrated BlueSnap Inc.’s All-in-one Payment Platform into its system. BAMS is the first integration since First …

Credit, debit, and prepaid card fraud shows no signs of retreat, finds the Sixth Annual Fraud Report from IDology, an Atlanta-based identity-verification company. Sixty-seven percent of executive respondents to an IDology survey said card-based fraud is most prevalent among their industries. That compares to 65% in 2017. Other fraud types …

Best known for its ATMs, NCR Corp. has long been close to the point-of-sale payment business with its software products such as Retail One, Aloha, and NCR Silver, and its hardware for retailers and the hospitality industry that includes self-checkout systems for grocery stores. Now NCR is about to dive …

Point-of-sale terminal maker Equinox Payments announced an audible way to pay with the integration of LISNR ultrasonic technology. Phoenix-based Equinox said it is the first POS terminal maker to license the proprietary LISNR tech. Using inaudible sounds, the tech enables a smart phone to communicate and share data with devices …

Tablesafe, which specializes in point-of-sale systems for restaurants, said The Saltwater Grille has installed its technology, which includes EMV acceptance. The restaurant had been subject to rising chargebacks because it had not been EMV-compliant. Online installment-payments specialist Klarna signed its first U.S. merchant, Rancourt & Co., for a new service …

E-commerce payments provider CardinalCommerce said it completed its first series of 3-D Secure 2.1 transactions with American Express Co., Mastercard Inc., and Visa Inc. The transactions, which were not part of a test, were part of an early-adopter program in which merchants and issuers enabled EMV 3-D Secure 2.1 via CardinalCommerce, …

Strong cardholder spending generated higher discount revenue and contributed to a 22% profit increase at American Express Co. in the third quarter. AmEx late Thursday reported that U.S. card-billed business rose 10% to $194.6 billion from $176.4 billion a year earlier. International volume rose 5% to $100.1 billion, bringing AmEx’s …

In a reversal of its past practice, PayPal Holdings Inc. began two years ago working with competitive and semi-competitive partners, and on Thursday it added the last major U.S. card network to that list by announcing a tie-up with American Express Co. PayPal executives also disclosed the company’s performance numbers …

Payment processor ACI Worldwide Inc. reported Thursday that Toronto-based BMO Financial Group, the parent company of Bank of Montreal and Chicago’s Harris Bank, has rolled out ACI’s payments hub, which can connect banks to real-time payment services. The rollout took nine months, which BMO and Naples, Fla.-based ACI characterized as …

As the payments market, led by the card brands, preps for a potential increase in contactless transactions, sandwich chain Jimmy John’s is testing acceptance of EMV contactless payments. Announced Thursday, the test will use a Verifone Systems Inc. Engage P400 device at an undisclosed number of Jimmy John’s locations, Verifone …