Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

The mere hint that Amazon.com Inc. could add a person-to-person payments function to its Alexa voice-commerce service was enough early Friday to shave value off of the shares of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc., both of which offer P2P networks. At mid-morning, Square’s shares were down more than 3% …

Merchant processor Fattmerchant said its payments services will be available for clients of eConduit, which provides cloud-based connectivity for point-of-sale terminals used with POS systems, through sales partners. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has begun a program that allows users to select a parking space online and prepay for it …

Payment card networks and merchant acquirers still don’t have a solid read about how many merchants will take advantage of the networks’ new signature-optional policies that take effect this month. A merchant trade group, however, expects more than half of its members will cease requiring cardholder signatures at the point …

A vendor that provides online chat services for customer acquisition and engagement appears to be the common thread in breaches disclosed Wednesday by Delta Air Lines Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. The service provider is [24]7.ai Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based company that provides services like virtual chat agents and …

In the increasingly competitive market for tabletop point-of-sale terminals, providers are looking for some magic. One of them, Redwood City, Calif.-based E la Carte, said this week it is changing its name to Presto, which means “fast” in Italian, as the company points out, but also adds that the word …

New York’s comptroller, who oversees the state’s public pension funds, last week sent letters to the four general-purpose card networks, three of the nation’s biggest banks, and First Data Corp. and Worldpay Inc. asking them to assess whether gun sales should be considered restricted high-risk purchases, Bloomberg reported. New York’s letter comes …

Point-of-sale integrators, help desks, and other computer-related service providers for businesses, look out—the hackers are after you. The new Global Security Report 2018 from Chicago-based Trustwave says service providers were involved in 9.5% of the 700-plus data compromises the firm investigated in 2017. In 2016, service providers played a role …

Elavon, the merchant-acquiring subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp, is expanding its Atlanta headquarters and adding 180 jobs over the next three years in its integrated-payments and e-commerce sectors, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported. In the first deployment of its peer-to-peer payment service outside the U.S., Square Inc. is rolling out its Cash app in the …

Mobile-wallet usage is expected to increase in 2019 as almost 2.1 billion consumers worldwide choose the payment option, predicts Juniper Research Ltd. In its “Mobile Wallets: Service Provider Analysis, Market Opportunities & Forecasts 2018-2022” report released Wednesday, United Kingdom-based Juniper notes that next year’s forecasted number of mobile-wallet users is …

Metra, the commuter-rail agency in the Chicago area, will cease selling tickets on its Web site in late June, partly to avoid payment card security expenses. Riders, however, will still have a mobile-ticketing option through the Chicago Transit Authority’s Ventra fare system. Metra, which operates 11 transit lines and carries …

Bank processors over the past several years have worked to combine cardless technology with a continuing consumer demand for cash, a trend that took on momentum on Wednesday with an announcement from Fiserv Inc. that three ATM manufacturers are now supporting the company’s 3-year-old CardFree Cash service. ATM makers Genmega, …

POS equipment maker Ingenico Group said KFC Corp., a unit of Yum! Brands Inc., migrated its U.S. payment system to Ingenico’s Telium semi-integrated POS service. Consumers now can make chip-and-sign, chip-and-PIN, magnetic-stripe, and contactless transactions at KFC locations. Online shopping-cart provider 3dcart said its upcoming version 8.1 will support Google …

Wire-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. and Walmart Inc. announced a new international service Tuesday dubbed Walmart2World that the companies say enables recipients to get funds in as little as 10 minutes. The long-time partners also renewed for two years the contract under which Walmart offers MoneyGram’s various money-transfer and bill-pay …

Lately, the cryptocurrency craze has raised any number of questions, but probably the most pressing one for the payments business is whether any of these hundreds of tokens can ever succeed as an actual payment device. But while fluctuating trading values plague all of the digital currencies, one stands out …

Data from 5 million stolen credit and debit cards is coming up for sale, and a cybersecurity firm says the cards were used at retailers Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, and Saks’ off-price chain Saks Off Fifth. Many details about the breach remain unknown, including the extent to which …

While mobile-payments growth has fallen short of expectations in the United States, worldwide mobile volume will grow at an average annual rate of 33.8% through 2023, reaching $4.57 trillion by that year, according to projections by Allied Market Research. Market drivers include consumer preference for digital and cashless payments, the firm …

NXT-ID Inc., a provider of authentication and contactless-payment technology, reported on Monday that its revenue tripled last year compared to 2016 while its adjusted earnings before interest, depreciation, taxes, and amortization swung positive. The Melbourne, Fla.-based company is best-known in the payments market for its Fit Pay Inc. unit, which …

Advent International, a private-equity firm with considerable experience in the payments space, announced Friday that it had acquired a majority stake in the big independent sales organization and payment processor Clearent LLC and merged it with FieldEdge, an independent software vendor serving home-services contractors. Advent had also bought FieldEdge. Financial …

The Request Network, a decentralized payment network built on the Ethereum digital currency, says it is now live on the main network used by Ethereum. This development enables requesting and sending cryptocurrency payments for goods, services, or as peer-to-peer payments, Request Network says. These initial digital-currency payments are available only …

Processor Payment Data Systems Inc., which acquired the independent sales organization Singular Payments LLC in September, reported revenues of $5.62 million in 2017’s fourth quarter, up 94% from $2.89 million a year earlier. Revenues for all of 2017 totaled $14.6 million, up 21%. Full-year credit card transaction and dollar volume …