Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Chase, a unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co., enabled cardless ATM access at nearly all of its 16,000 ATMs nationwide when consumers use Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay loaded with a Chase debit or Liquid card. In related news, Chase said Los Angeles-area consumers can use Chase Pay …

Furthering its reach into software services for card-accepting merchants, Global Payments Inc. announced Thursday that it has a deal to buy AdvancedMD Inc., a software-as-a-service provider for 33,000 doctors and 11,000 practices, from Marlin Equity Partners for $700 million in cash. The announcement came as Atlanta-based Global Payments reported second-quarter …

USA Technologies Inc. said Pepsi Bottling Ventures (PBV) has signed a multiyear contract for USAT’s ePort Connect contactless-payment technology covering 13,000 vending machines. PBV is said to be the largest privately held bottler for Pepsi products in North America. NuData Security, a unit of Mastercard Inc., released a service to …

Will Square Inc. apply for a national banking charter, now that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has opened the door to financial-technology firms? As of late Wednesday, the answer remains unclear. “We’re really well-positioned to broaden access to the financial system, which is our core purpose,” said …

Shares of Diebold Nixdorf Inc. plummeted 34% in late Wednesday morning trading after the ATM manufacturer and banking and retail hardware and software provider reported an unexpectedly large second-quarter loss and said it is looking to revise its lending agreements in the face of lowered financial predictions. “While revenue was …

Apple Inc. said Apple Pay transactions surpassed 1 billion in the company’s third quarter, ended June 30. During an earnings call with analysts Tuesday, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the 1-billion mark was triple the amount a year ago. “To put that tremendous growth into perspective, this past quarter, …

E-commerce sales accounted for 30% of the total spend in the second quarter, according to First Data Corp.’s “2018 Payments and Commerce Mid-Year Review.” Overall spending in the quarter increased 4.8% from the same quarter a year ago. By channel, in-store sales increased 4% and e-commerce increased 6.7%. The report …

Financial technology firms, many of which command significant positions in the payments business, can now apply to become national banks. Moving on a proposal it’s had under consideration for months, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced on Tuesday it will begin accepting bank-charter applications from fintech firms. …

It’s a fact of doing business that retailers have to contend with fraud. Now, the cost of managing fraud has increased, says LexisNexis Risk Solutions in its 2018 True Cost of Fraud report for retailers. For every dollar of fraud, merchants pay $2.94, a figure that is 6% more than …

E-commerce marketplace and payments-technology provider Shopify Inc. reported revenue for the quarter ended June 30 of $245 million, up 62% year-over-year. Gross payments volume totaled $3.6 billion, up 64% from $2.2 billion in the same quarter last year. Shopify posted a $30.8 million operating loss, nearly double the $15.9 million …

Citing acceptance costs, Foods Co, a California unit of leading supermarket chain The Kroger Co., says it will stop accepting Visa credit cards Aug. 14 at 26 stores. “Foods Co is discontinuing the acceptance of Visa credit cards to save on the high costs associated with the credit card company’s …

Processor First Data Corp.’s strategy of providing payments integration to independent software vendors appears to be yielding results. The Atlanta-based company said it signed 94 ISVs in the second quarter. That, along with good growth in its direct-sales channel, contributed to the 17.1% growth in second-quarter revenue in First Data’s …

Joe Kaplan, the chief executive of merchant processor Paya and former president of the Electronic Transactions Association’s board of directors, died unexpectedly last week, the ETA announced. Kaplan was the former CEO of Total Merchant Services and founded Innovative Merchant Solutions, which he sold to Intuit Inc. in 2003 and …

The independent sales organization business is one that has spawned multimillion-dollar fortunes for numerous entrepreneurs. But perhaps it’s time for the industry to begin thinking beyond pure profit, merchant-acquiring executives suggested Thursday. The executives participated in a panel dubbed “Payments Doing Good” at the MidWest Acquirers Association annual conference in …

Long an afterthought in payments, peer-to-peer transfers are top-of-mind in the industry just now, and this week three reports emerged to show just how fast the payment type is growing for bank and nonbank networks alike. The bank-owned Zelle network processed 100 million transactions totaling $28 billion in the three …

The Pulse debit network, Diners Club International, and the network partners of Discover Financial Services collectively generated $57.3 billion in second-quarter volume, a 14% increase from a year earlier, Discover reported Thursday. Pulse, the biggest of the three units in Discover’s Payment Services segment, posted $44.3 billion in volume, up …

Processor Stripe launched Stripe Issuing, a platform to aid merchants creating their own credit and debit cards. The service enables developers and businesses to create physical or virtual cards with a single application programming interface call to the platform. Stripe said it is not issuing cards directly to consumers. Physical cards …

Restaurant-services specialist LevelUp is being sold to Grubhub Inc. for $390 million. Announced Wednesday, the deal weds Boston-based LevelUp, with its expertise in digital ordering, payment, and loyalty, with Grubhub’s online and mobile food-ordering services. Chicago-based Grubhub also owns the Seamless, Eat24, AllMenus, and MenuPages brands. The deal is an …

Mastercard Inc. posted a 33% increase in second-quarter profit as its worldwide purchase volumes rose nearly 16% and U.S. volume grew 10.5%. New business wins, including cobranded cards, and more customers for existing products drove the higher numbers. “We continue to make excellent progress with cobrands,” Mastercard chief executive Ajay …

Person-to-person payments are hot these days, and PayPal Holdings Inc. has one of the hottest products in the market with its Venmo service. But as PayPal revealed Wednesday, Venmo can create some friction for its parent even as it vitally expands its payments business. PayPal reported $14.2 billion in payment …