Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

The payments business has become even more complicated than usual in recent years by politics, a point driven home on Friday when PayPal Holdings Inc. announced it will stop processing payments for the controversial Infowars Web site and related properties. “We do not take these actions lightly and we work …

When security managers and executives gather this week for the PCI Security Standards Council’s annual North America Community Meeting, one of the topics sure to be on their minds is point-to-point encryption (P2PE) of payment card data. The Council reported Friday that it plans to issue a new version of …

For years, PayPal Holdings Inc. has worked to expand its reach to physical merchants, and now, with the closing on Thursday of its $2.2 billion acquisition of Stockholm-based iZettle AB, the digital-payments company is taking a significant step in achieving that ambition. At a stroke, the acquisition brings to PayPal …

The San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission next week will consider a $461 million contract with Cubic Transportation Systems to modernize the Clipper fare-payment system used by 22 separate transit agencies in the region. The upgrade will retain the closed-loop Clipper card that uses near-field communication for contactless fare …

Nxt-ID Inc. announced it will spin off its payments, authentication, and credential-management assets, including its FitPay unit, into a separate and independent company. It expects to complete the transaction by Nov. 15. Michael Orlando, currently chief operating officer at Nxt-ID and president of FitPay, will become chief executive of the …

With rumors circulating that Amazon.com Inc. is interested in getting into banking and also preparing to open thousands more cashier-less stores, new research results released by management-consulting firm Bain & Co. claim that a large pool of consumers would be willing to bank with the online retailing giant. “Our survey …

Make no mistake, criminals are unrelenting in trying to get to sensitive data. In the eight months from November through June, more than 30 billion malicious login attempts were tracked by Akamai Technologies, a Web-services company, in its 2018 State of the Internet report released Wednesday. In May and June …

Mobile POS specialist CardFlight released version 5.0 of its SwipeSimple payment-acceptance service. Among the new features are pairing receipt printers and countertop hardware for issuing receipts via a mobile printer; discount options; item images; and a virtual terminal with address-verification support. Payments provider Fattmerchant announced an integration with QuickBooks Online …

Déjà vu, anyone? Similar to its now-moot predecessor agreement from 2012, the proposed $6.24 billion monetary-damages settlement in a big credit card interchange antitrust case announced Tuesday by Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. is drawing diverging reviews from merchants. Based on anecdotal comments and the history of the earlier settlement, …

When you flip over your debit card or go to an ATM, you see logos for companies like Shazam, First Data’s Star Network and others, but you may not think about the role these processors play in the payments system. As one of those processors, we simplify the connections that …

Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. announced early Tuesday that they and defendant banks have agreed to settle for $6.24 billion merchants’ monetary claims stemming from 13-year-old litigation over credit card interchange. Today’s announcements represent the second settlement of the sweeping class action known as MDL 1720 pending in U.S. District …

Stripe, the San Francisco-based online payments company, is taking a step to get inside stores. The company on Monday launched Stripe Terminal, a service that puts Stripe’s processing software onto point-of-sale hardware devices that merchants can use to accept payments in their stores. The move follows similar migrations in recent …

Processor First Data Corp. said it shipped its 1 millionth Clover point-of-sale sale device aimed mainly at small and mid-sized merchants; the device went to Friesen-Apotheken, a pharmacy chain based in Bad Malente, Germany. Payments platform BlueSnap has begun local processing for business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies in Australia. Buildium, a …

With volume building for same-day processing of automated clearing house items, the regulatory body for the extensive ACH network announced Monday a trio of enhancements aimed at, among other things, raising the dollar limit on the faster transfers and making credit funds available faster during the processing day. The changes, …

Business-software provider Infor said it purchased Vivonet Inc., which provides point-of-sale software to the hospitality industry. Terms were not disclosed. Global Payments Inc. announced its Heartland acquiring and technology unit has developed application programming interfaces, end-to-end encryption support, and other software for Ingenico Group’s Desk/3500 terminal. PayPal Holdings Inc. announced …

American Express Co. formed its Digital Labs unit less than a year ago, and it has plenty to do as it evaluates new payment forms and new ways to attract cardholders and merchants. Digital Labs is concerned with digital payments, digital ways of engaging with cardholders, and research and development, …

More mobile and contactless opportunities may be in the future for debit card issuers. The 2018 Debit Issuer Study from Houston-based Pulse Network, released this week, found 12.2% of debit cards were enrolled in Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay as of January, up from 6.3% in January 2017. Debit card enrollment …

Grubhub, an online and mobile food-ordering marketplace, closed on its previously announced acquisition of LevelUp, a mobile-payments and -promotions platform, for $390 million in cash. Dream Payments, a digital-payments platform provider, released an application programming interface that allows insurers to link to the Dream Payments Hub as well as Mastercard …

Surcharges and discounts for cash aren’t brand-new pricing tactics, but interest in them by independent sales organizations is rising because of falling legal barriers and the potential profits. Repeated sessions about the topic were packed Thursday at the Western States Acquirers Association annual conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. The presenter was Ryan …

Good news for debit card issuers emerged Thursday as a major report indicated fraud losses fell in 2017 compared to 2016. Losses on point-of-sale transactions totaled an estimated $850 million, down 5.5% from the 2016 total, according to the 2018 Debit Issuer Study from the Houston-based Pulse Network, a unit …