Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

The Department of Finance Canada on Thursday issued its latest merchant-friendly announcement regarding payment cards, this one disclosing agreements with Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. for an average 10-basis-point reduction in credit card interchange for small and mid-size businesses to take effect in 2020. The department also said American Express …

More than 252 million iPhone owners globally use Apple Pay, a figure that equates to 31% of the active iPhone base, says Loup Ventures, a Minneapolis-based venture-capital firm. A year ago, the figure was 25%. That growth mostly is coming from international consumers, who Loup Ventures says account for 85% …

Bitcoin’s volatility may have dampened the payments industry’s enthusiasm for the cryptocurrency, but payments players are now reaping patent awards for Bitcoin-related inventions they filed years ago. The latest example is Intuit Inc., the Mountain View, Calif.-based company behind the popular Quicken and QuickBooks accounting programs for consumers and small …

Payments provider i3 Verticals Inc. reported revenue of $84.5 million in its fiscal third quarter ended June 30, a 27.5% increase from $66.3 million a year ago. It had a loss of $655,000, compared with net income of $887,000 last year. This marks the first earnings results for the company …

Payment-card maker CPI Card Group said Thursday that new sales from an existing customer boosted its U.S. prepaid debit card revenue 26% in the second quarter. Littleton, Colo.-based CPI also reported that sold its United Kingdom business to private-investment firm SEA Equity for $4.5 million. With revenue of $15.4 million …

Having completed its first full quarter of operation on June 30, Worldpay Inc. on Thursday reported just over $1 billion in net revenue for the period from business lines that include merchant processing, technology services, and card-issuer support. That’s up 11% from what Vantiv Inc. and Worldpay Group plc would …

Citing data from the global payment card networks, the U.S. Payments Forum reported in its latest update on the conversion from magnetic-stripe to EMV chip card payments that approximately 57% of in-store card transactions are now “chip-on-chip,” meaning an EMV point-of-sale terminal read an EMV card. Also, acceptance of contact …

Green Dot Corp. executives played up their “banking-as-a-service” platform Wednesday as the company reported strong second-quarter growth in most of its business lines, but they said little about the support they provide for Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay Cash service. Pasadena, Calif.-based Green Dot supplies the virtual prepaid card that customers …

EVO Payments Inc. is hunting for new international markets as it continues to see growth in its U.S.-based business with independent software vendors, company executives said Wednesday during the merchant processor’s first earnings conference call as a public company. Founded in 1989 as an independent sales organization, Atlanta-based EVO in …

Malicious attacks on payments systems come in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes, making it a nettlesome problem figuring out which types of attack require the most defensive resources. Yet, the stakes could be highest in the United States, where the average cost per breach, at $225, is one …

Flow, a cross-border e-commerce platform, has added a cryptocurrency option through an arrangement with BitPay, a cryptocurrency exchange. Through a so-called marketplace update, General Motors Co. is enabling in-dash fuel payments in select Buick models at Exxon Mobil stations. The capability is expected to come to other GM makes, 2017 …

With a focus on data privacy and security, a review of five mobile person-to-person payment services places Apple Pay at the top, Consumer Reports says. Released Monday, the report from the product-review magazine evaluated Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay, PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo, Square Inc.’s Cash app; Facebook Inc.’s Messenger, and Early …

Microsoft Corp. continues to make enhancements to Microsoft Pay in a highly competitive market for digital wallets. This week, the computing giant said Microsoft Pay has been integrated with Masterpass, the online wallet from Mastercard Inc. that lets consumers pay with stored credentials from a variety of payment providers. “We …

Payments-systems provider Worldnet TPS Ltd. said it has integrated Quickchip technology into its GoChip line of point-of-sale products to enable one-second EMV chip card transactions. Payments provider Shift4 Payments Inc. launched a management solution called Lighthouse Business Management System for clients using Shift4’s point-of-sale and payment-processing products. The new service …

One year after the hard fork that created it, Bitcoin Cash is in some ways mimicking the digital currency it was spawned from. Bitcoin Cash’s price at $693 Monday morning has slid by about $1,000 in the past three months, according to CoinMarketCap.com. And it’s well under the $4,091 peak …

A Web-site glitch involving The Independent Community Bankers of America’s bank subsidiary exposed personal data about thousands of credit card applicants for more than a year, according to a report. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that social-media titan Facebook Inc. has asked some of the nation’s largest …

NRT Technology Corp. and Sightline Payments LLC, which are expected to merge and become NRT Sightline, announced its Connect+ payment gateway is being used by Hard Rock International for its recently launched online casino in New Jersey. Payments processor Worldpay Inc. extended for four years an agreement with CRS Texas, …

The growth surge at the nation’s automated clearing house network shows no signs of slowing down. The payments system handled 5.68 billion transactions in the quarter ended June 30, a 6.2% increase year-over-year, according to numbers from Herndon, Va.-based NACHA, the network’s governing body. The network has now notched growth …

Discover Financial Services announced Friday that its No. 2 executive, president and chief operating officer Roger C. Hochschild, will become chief executive on Oct. 1, succeeding long-time chairman and CEO David W. Nelms. Nelms, 57, Discover’s CEO since February 2004, will become executive chairman at that time before retiring in …

Cardtronics plc may have been one of the few companies to benefit from Visa Inc.’s June 1 outage in Europe. It notched a record high volume in the United Kingdom, Edward H. West, Cardtronics chief executive and director, told analysts during a conference call Thursday to discuss the ATM deployer’s …