Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals

Fraud-mitigation specialist Verifi released its “The Chargeback Triangle” report, completed by Javelin Strategy & Research, that found consumer disputes and chargebacks created $31 billion in financial losses in 2017, with merchants taking on almost $19 billion and issuing banks $12 billion. It also found that for every dollar in a …

The Western Union Co.’s Speedpay subsidiary announced the latest release of its Next Gen bill-payment platform. Card manufacturer CPI Card Group Inc. reported that first-quarter sales of credit and debit cards for the U.S. market fell 6.5% year-over-year, but U.S. prepaid card sales jumped 63%. The number of data breaches …

Apple Inc.’s move to create a new Apple Pay credit card with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. may or may not help boost usage of the mobile-payments service, but one thing it is likely to do is cement Apple’s ties with the thousands of banks that support the service, observers say. …

Cardlytics Inc. is building its infrastructure to support as many as 200 million monthly active users of its merchant-funded rewards program by the end of 2019, more than three times the 60 million it currently has, company executives said Thursday. The big expansion comes as Cardlytics’ grows its business with …

Blockchain provider Ripple Labs Inc. reported results on a number of pilots it is running for its XRapid cross-border payments network. Participants in the pilots have realized cost savings ranging from 40% to 70% compared to conventional fees. The average XRapid transaction took a little over two minutes, compared to two to …

Ever since banks, merchants, and tech companies first introduced mobile services, they’ve looked for ways to entice more usage by streamlining the way consumers interact with little screens. Now Wells Fargo & Co. has decided to put frequently used payments services on the home screen of its mobile app, before …

Worldpay Inc. reported Thursday that the integration of its predecessor companies, U.S.-based Vantiv Inc. and United Kingdom-based Worldpay Group plc, continued apace in the first quarter, and that revenues on a combined basis grew 12% year-over-year. The 115,000 merchants served by pre-merger Worldpay’s Atlanta-based U.S. operation are moving to Vantiv’s …

Two payments companies are turning to the investment market to raise funds with public offerings. EVO Payments International says it began its roadshow to promote its initial public offering it announced in April. If successful, the IPO could generate anywhere from $186,666,662 to $213,333,328, based on a share value ranging from $14 …

Visa Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. have extended to Canada an agreement they made in 2016 that gives PayPal access to Visa’s tokenization engine in return for promoting Visa products for PayPal account funding. In related news, Visa said it is expanding its Visa Direct service in Canada, with processor …

Cyberthieves can use the payment credentials they steal to charge products to the people who are the legitimate owners of that data. That’s bad enough. But increasingly, these fraudsters are using the information they glean from data breaches to invent fresh identities, sometimes out of whole cloth, leaving credit card …

First Data Corp. is betting big on integrated payments, and Square Inc. is adding a restaurant-specific point-of-sale system to capture more transactions from larger merchants. Atlanta-based First Data was one of the investors in a $12 million funding round for Salido Inc., a restaurant POS system provider, reported CNBC.com Wednesday. …

Jim Lofgren has been appointed chief executive of Nosto, an online retail personalization firm. Most recently, Lofgren led Klarna AB’s North American operations. Payments provider First Atlantic Commerce announced an expansion into Canada through its virtual terminal for call centers. Bluefin Payment Systems is providing point-to-point encryption services as part …

Unattended payments continue to bear fruit for USA Technologies Inc. as the company said its connections increased 92.3% in its fiscal third quarter from a year ago. Malvern, Pa.-based USAT said its connections totaled 969,000 in the quarter ended March 31, up from 504,000. Its total number of customers, at …

Microsoft Corp. is adapting its Microsoft Pay wallet to allow users of Outlook to pay bills and invoices they receive in the email program. The new feature, announced Monday at a company-sponsored developer conference, will become available to “a limited number” of users of Outlook’s Web-based service “over the next …

Merchant acquirer Global Payments Inc. is teaming up with yet another company owned by private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners as it looks for new opportunities to integrate payment processing with software providers serving a wide range of businesses. Last week, Atlanta-based Global announced a deal with RA Outdoors LLC, which …

Payments provider St. Louis Merchant Services announced it is offering the PayLo Cash Discount Progam from SignaPay Ltd. Fiserv Inc. has teamed with fraud-analytics firm Rippleshot to offer Card Risk Office, an early-detection service that allows client institutions to identify potential fraud anywhere from 30 days to 60 days before …

An airline trade group has teamed up with Germany’s Deutsche Bank to develop a payment system that would bypass the credit card networks, potentially saving users billions in interchange. The proposal comes from the International Air Transport Association, which says it has 280 members representing 83% of air traffic. The …

A new entry in the arena for payments-related acquisitions, Syncapay, is targeting specialists in disbursements and payouts. Plano, Texas-based Syncapay debuted last week with the intent to acquire payments companies that could benefit from shared services, while retaining the autonomy that differentiates them. “We are not looking at doing a …

Ripple Labs Inc. has notched a number of successes lately for its distributed-ledger technology, but now it finds its cryptocurrency, known as XRP, is caught up in a lawsuit that reflects a larger debate over whether such digital tokens constitute securities. Ryan Coffey, an investor who bought XRP in January …

E-commerce attacks increased 93% in the first quarter of 2018 in comparison to the same quarter a year ago, finds the Q1 2018 Cybercrime Report from ThreatMetrix, a unit of LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Based on an analysis of 210 million attacks ThreatMetrix detected and stopped on behalf of its clients, …